From the day
Perspective: The Teenager · Tactile
I spent my Sunday afternoon hunched over the nursery floor, the cold, greasy steel of my new Meccano strips biting into my fingertips as I tightened a tiny bolt. My stiff wool trousers chafed against my knees, a capital nuisance compared to the smooth, lacquered wooden engine of the Lionel train I’d just shoveled aside to make room for my mechanical crane. My father looked up from the morning paper, grumbling about "The Man in the Street" while I hummed the brassy notes of *Blaze Away* to drown out his stuffy political talk. I just want to finish this rig before the humidity makes my celluloid collar go limp and my Sunday chores begin.