Here's the story that started it all...

HOW TO CLEAN PLAY-DOH OUT OF A GAME BOY

So, What was Santa thinking when he gave Steven, our 3 year old, a Game Boy AND Play-Doh for Christmas anyway? It was a day or two after the big day when one of the older children brought to me Steven's Game-Boy, saying it didn't work anymore, mentioning that "by the way" he put Play-Doh in the game slot. I looked in there to see the green goop smooshed inside the slot and in the game cartridge. Knowing how much "Santa" paid for the Game-Boy and the cartridge, and how quickly Play-Doh hardens to nearly as hard as a rock, I had to go to work right away trying to clean it out. It wasn't that easy though.

The cartridge slot on the back of a Game Boy is not as accessible to cleaning tools as it is to cartridges or other foreign objects (like Play-Doh), so I took it upon myself to remove the back cover. That was when I was stopped dead in my tracks by 6 "special" screws that probably nobody has a screwdriver for (except for the Nintendo manufacturer in China). The screws have 3 little notches instead of 4, like a Philips screwdriver. It is beyond me why they had to use these screws. What were they thinking? I painstakingly took one of the screws out with the blade of my pocket knife, but that must have been the loose one. None of the others would come out that way. I went out to my grinder and fashioned a "screwdriver" out of a nail. It wasn't an easy task though because I am used to grinding 2 or 4 equal surfaces on something, not 3. It took a few tries before I got it right. I was running out of nail. I finally made something that resembled a screwdriver and was able to carefully twist the remaining 5 screws out of the back of the Game Boy. That was the easy part.

I found the slot where the game cartridge fits in and tried sliding things in there to get the smooshed in Play-Doh. Everything was either too thin, too thick, or had handles that got in the way of the other parts. I stuck a piece of cardboard in there and got some of it out, then there was the stuff that was stuck in between all the tiny "teeth" in that slot. I tried other things: screwdrivers, knives, rolled up toilet paper, nails, wires, etc, etc. Nothing seemed to reach the stuff stuck between those "teeth." Then I got to thinking "Teeth!" You know what comes next… Yes, I grabbed a toothbrush and started brushing back and forth. That didn't work. I remembered that lesson they taught us in third grade (when the dental hygienist comes to school and gives everybody a toothbrush and those red pills) that you don't brush back and forth, but up and down. I had more success that way. I was still not 100% successful though. There was stuff still caught between the gold "teeth" and I would have tried dental floss if I could have gotten it to fit in there.

Out of desperation I grabbed a Q-tip and tried to shove it in the slot. It wouldn't fit, so I ripped most of the cotton off and it fit in the slot really tightly. It started getting the green Play-Doh off though. I went thought about 4 Q-tips, each getting more off until I didn't see any more sticking to the trace of cotton that was on the end of the Q-tip. I blew all the crumbs out of the slot and inspected it really closely and found that there was no visible green Play-Doh anymore. I slipped a game cartridge into the game and turned it on and it worked! I was so proud of myself, until I slipped the game cartridge in that I thought I cleaned the Play-Doh off of. It was Steven's favorite game too (the only one he knows how to play - Donkey Kong).

I figured that there was more Play-Doh stuck up inside the circuit board, which would involve taking the cartridge apart. That was a whole 'nother chore in itself. The game cartridges have special screws too, but not like the Game Boys. These screws are like reverse Torx screws with all the ridges on the outside instead of the inside. They are also recessed, so it would be impossible to take the screw out without seriously messing up the plastic case. There is only 1 screw though. Where there's a will, there's a way, since a game often costs almost half as much as a Game Boy. I put the tips of my wire clippers down in the recessed hole and clamped onto the ridges of the screw and twisted, taking a good share of the plastic off the recessed hole. It slipped off a few times, but I finally got it off. The covers slid open to reveal little scraps of Play-Doh stuck to the circuit board, which I brushed off with the toothbrush and polished with a pencil eraser. I put it back together the same way I took it apart and was so pleased with myself for fixing it.

I almost didn't give my son back the Game Boy, but I knew that his little heart would be sad if I didn't. I handed it back to him and told him that I fixed it. He said "oh." Then he grabbed it to go back in and play Donkey Kong with it. I explained to him that he shouldn't put anymore Play-Doh in it or anything else except Game Boy games, to which he responded, "oh." And went on playing.

The moral of the story? I can't think of one, except maybe that you should never allow "Santa" to give a three year old a Game Boy AND Play-Doh all in the same Christmas.

Bite me…

Never walk up to a pair of Dobermans and say, “Bite me!” even under your breath. Doberman pincers like to bite people… I know, I’ve been bitten by them before. So here I am at a campground and I was a 17 year old smart-Alec kid and there is this guy in a campsite across from ours playing a guitar – something that I was acutely interested in at the time. These people also had two Doberman pincers – dogs that I had absolutely despised. Let me tell you, I have never had good experiences with Dobermans. Like my earliest recollection with one was the three legged one down on the corner that used to chase me whenever I rode by on my bike – and would have gotten me if it had that 4th leg. I had gotten to know the people that owned the dog (or that the dog owned as the case may be) and though I enjoyed these people’s company, I loathed their dog. Well, as I visited and later got a babysitting job from them I had to get to know the dog. This dog and I had a mutual “understanding" I be nice to him, and he doesn’t attack me anymore. So here I am sitting in the living room staring at “Josh” (well, glaring would be probably more appropriate) and I’m waiting for the girl to wake up (who, believe it or not was more of a pain than the Doberman) and being as quiet as a mouse so I didn’t wake her up. I wasn’t an avid reader, so that left me with a lot of time to come up with ideas that only a 13-year old could come up with. My game was to whisper, “Josh!” as soft as I could without him hearing me. Now Doberman Pincers have a very acute sense of hearing – as I had discovered through this experiment, and they are also very smart – and I might add that they’re very demanding. I would start out speaking audibly, “Josh!” and watch his ears perk up from across the room. Then I would get softer “Josh!” and eventually it was “Josh!” which I knew I couldn’t hear and to me seemed like I was mouthing the words, but he heard it. So this three-legged dog would get up and hobble across the room not to just see what I wanted, because in his mind he had already figured out what I wanted. I wanted to pet him – that’s what he decided and he was going to prove his point by leaning on my legs and pinning me against the couch until I had sufficiently petted him as much as I wanted to. Well, needless to say, I didn’t try that experiment that often. Once the babysitting job had ended, the dog was back to chasing me on my bike and I was back to pedaling like the dickens to get past.

Then there was this Doberman that I had never even seen before... I had a paper route that was spread over about 8 miles distance and I did the whole thing on my bike – every day. It was also the responsibility of the paperboy to collect the money for subscriptions. This is the part I hated worse about the job. Back then it was more common for people to have biting dogs and I had had several run-ins with these dogs. Here’s how the scenario usually went: I would go up to the door, the dog would come running from around the house – foaming and frothing from the mouth with its teeth bared and the owner would always say, “don’t worry, he won’t bite” and before I had a chance to even relax my defensive stance, that dog would be munching on me. Then came the “surprised” response of the people, “He’s never done that before, I’m so sorry – bad boy” (speaking to the dog, of course) Since it was almost impossible to collect money from these people because they refused to pen up their dangerous animal, I would often times avoid collection from these people – and delivery of their newspaper would cease (well, I wish I would have thought of that part back then). Anyway, after attempting to collect money from one of these deadbeats and finding nobody home still, I got back down to the end of their 500 foot gravel driveway, at the bottom of the 12% grade hill – I was waiting at the road to see if there were any cars going by… and out of nowhere and without warning I felt a piercing, penetrating pain in my buttocks. I turned around to see this Doberman staring up at me with the look on his face as if to say, “yeah, I just bit you in the butt – so what are you going to do about it?”

There were other encounters like the stupid Doberman (which is rare for Dobermans) that jumped on my bike and got caught in the spokes – bending the spokes and possibly breaking his leg… and believe it or not I actually had sympathy for the creature. Other encounters I have forgotten because they were either insignificant or I have been protected from the trauma by amnesia, but I vividly remember that encounter at the campground where I whispered a barely audible, “bite me!” to those two Dobermans that were thankfully chained up securely. The guy came out and tried his best to calm down his vicious beasts – meanwhile chastising me for tempting his dogs as his wife stood there with her hands on her hips – with the look of, “how stupid could you get” in her eyes and his preteen daughter smirking at me.

The nerve of some people.