A holiday memory from a Christmas past …

Spread out before me are the components of an adult science kit: gadgets, gizmos, tubes, crystals, powders, vials, test strips, a very large magnet, and a weighty book of instructions.

I have yet to open the book of instructions that describes each experiment, but I am hopeful that something mixed or stirred with something else will create a momentary blinding flash or maybe even smoke. As I take the magnet and place it against my wedding ring to check if gold will attract the magnet or if the magnet will play hard to get, I notice a glass vial containing a pink liquid. I pick up the vial and read a message in all caps that runs across its center: “DO NOT DRINK THE PRESERVATIVE!”

Pink liquid, you are captivating, but not so captivating that I want to tilt my head back and chug you down. I set the vial back down among its playmates and look for other imperative sentences among them. Is there fine print on a test tube that advises not to use it as a lint brush? Should I not employ the test strips as fake eyelashes?

Finding none, I make the sensible conclusion that the only reason the pink preservative begs not to be drunk is because some other adult with the same adult science kit once drank it — and likely did so because they thought they were following instructions.

I flip through the instructions and see that the activities are laid out with a combination of words and diagrams. The old problem, one I have long thought about but have never figured out, arises once again for me to mull over. Put simply, is it easier to write instructions for someone else to follow or is it easier to follow the instructions someone else has written?

***

Task yourself with either writing out the instructions or following the instructions someone else has written on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Speaking from firsthand experience, it is more fun to take the role of someone literally following the instructions spread out before them. When you are told to “put peanut butter on the bread,” empty all the peanut butter in the jar onto the bread. And when you are told to “put jelly and peanut butter slices together,” place them so that the slice with peanut butter and the slice with jelly each face outward so they can’t be smushed together.

If it is a challenge to write instructions on how to make a sandwich, consider writing and following instructions on how to check for the acidity of a liquid.

***

I do sympathize with companies that sell items that are shipped in a box and then put together by the customer. If they could, businesses would just send the box with all the parts and without the instruction manual because they know that their instructions — even if they revise them many times — only get in the way of properly putting their product together. Sometimes the instructions even end up sending a customer to the ER with a newly preserved stomach lining.

Many companies have moved beyond the traditional mindset that words combined to form sentences can actually impart knowledge. Instead, they rely on an illustrator to draw out every step and action one has to take. My pingpong table came with instructions like that. Upon completion, I found that I had several screws and pieces of hardware left over, but the man in the final drawing had none.

In no way, I am pleased to say, has the unevenness of the table’s playing surface or an unshakeable, nagging sense of its imminent collapse taken away from my family’s pleasure for the game.

***

Dear reader, my only instructions: Do not drink the preservative. Instead, may you have a safe and joyous holiday season! See you in 2024!

Gregory Greenleaf lives in Harpswell and teaches high school English. He ascribes, prescribes and subscribes to many old-fashioned ideas, but especially Charles Dickens’ observation that “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”