Neither Greg nor I have Engineering degrees.

Our English degrees have perhaps helped us land jobs outside of University but certainly didn’t help bump our resumes to the top of the pile.

We had never given our degrees a lot of thought until having children, specifically, when it came time to start assembling toys.

This week’s mission—the board game, Mouse Trap.

Having been married for almost thirteen years, there are a few things we’ve discovered about how our team works. One of those that need not be said is that Greg becomes angry if I open a box and begin assembling anything because my Doc Brown (unusual) approach usually means there will be a part installed backwards and very likely a pile of parts leftover I simply found no use for.

Not only does he have to finish assembling what I start but more often than not, has to disassemble my original work in order to make sense of the project.

This goes back to when we first bought IKEA shelving units and I would very quickly find the hidden allen key like I had “won” a prize and I would excitedly get to work.

Greg would enter the room and I would be two shelves in, one upside down, the other backwards and I would be cursing the Swedish instructions, now covered with blood (even though secretly, I never once looked at the instructions because it seemed so incredibly obvious there was only one logical way that chipboard was mounting.

When we work as a team (read—Greg is the foreman and I am the gopher) I can’t think of a time we didn’t open all of the pieces, lay them all out and both say simultaneously, “We’re missing something.”

Yesterday, I thought I would surprise the family by putting together a simple board game while Greg was working. I mean, it’s just a board game with instructions, a few plastic parts and two marbles.

There was no allen key so technically, I didn’t think I was breaking our unwritten rule that I’m forbidden to build anything without proper supervision.

There was however an elastic band described on several documents along with the mechanics of this thing, yet no elastic band to be found. There were two marbles, heavier than the average marble so I knew if I lost one or both, the old switcheroo with a regular, lighter version would likely get me caught and quickly.

The outcome was predictable. I became frustrated after fifteen minutes of gently placing a plastic, green hand atop a plastic blue stick that had absolutely no support and toppled over at the sight of me. The baby threatened to eat the marbles if I didn’t pay a little more attention to her. Ellie was playing the violin (rather violently) in my ear in an effort to add to the intensity of the imminent trapping of unsuspecting mice.

When Greg appeared on scene, not only was the mouse nowhere near ready to be trapped, Greg shook his head at the gigantic pile of pieces I had set aside despite being mentioned as “critical game pieces” in the manual, I simply didn’t have any use for them in my plans for trapping three, colourful (though should have been four, I seemed to be missing one) mice.

I pretended not to hear him as he said, “Okay, did you assemble any of these blue sticks or did they come out of the package like this?” Of course I assembled them, if I heard a snapping sound (over the concerto) I figured they were set to go.

“Did you throw anything away?”

“Where did you put the marbles?”

“Are we missing an elastic?”

“Why is the slide jammed into these two slots meant for the red tube?”

It has taken us two working days to piece this puppy together.

Tomorrow—we play!