Not in front of small children

How long does it take three reasonably intelligent adults to assemble a simple infant’s toy (that’s a simple toy, not a simple child)? Answer: About three hours if you deduct time spent for nervous breakdowns and profane outbursts. And, believe me, this is not a joke.

Let me explain. My wife, Jill, had purchased a plastic ride-on toy with trailer for her grandson’s (my step-grandson’s) first birthday.

The diagram on the box depicted a fairly simple device, so we left it until the day of Nate’s birthday before we opened the package and discovered that assembly was required. No problem. How hard could it be?

Well, pretty damn difficult as it turned out. You won’t be surprised to learn that things got off to a rocky start when I was the first person to attempt to assemble the ‘‘ATV with trailer’’.

It didn’t help that I misread the instructions and started by trying to insert a long steel axle for the steering from the wrong direction.

In my defence, my eyes were still watering from an outburst of laughter triggered by reading the toy’s warning instructions.

First, the company warned that the toy should be assembled only by adults. This proved to be a rather unnecessary injunction as we quickly discovered that a great deal of brute force, quite beyond Nate’s capabilities, was needed to get the blessed contraption together.

Then there was the warning for the rider always to wear a helmet and protective clothing. To be clear, we are talking here about a small plastic ride-on toy for 1- to 3-year-olds, the propulsion method being their small feet.

Then there was the warning for the vehicle not to be used on public roads, on sloped driveways or near swimming pools. Not much point in taking it to Dunedin then, to test-drive it on Baldwin St followed by a circuit of the Moana Pool.

It was the next dire warning that really made me crack up. ‘‘Always obey your local traffic laws and regulations.’’

Since we had already been warned not to use the tiny ATV on public roads, the need for Nate to heed traffic lights and not park on double yellow lines seemed slightly unnecessary, particularly as he’d probably be exhausted by the time he had propelled the toy as far as his front gate.

‘‘Do not ride at night or in wet weather.’’ Well, that rules out his parents sending him out to play in a midnight thunderstorm.

‘‘Allow only one rider and maximum user weight limit for this product to 20kg.’’ Bang goes Nate’s chance of offering his local MP, Gerry Brownlee, a lift to the airport,

So, I suspect you can visualise why the tears streaming down my cheeks affected my ability to read the assembly instructions properly.

I quickly found I had problems aligning the axle in the necessary holes in the forks, which was just as well because, as I mentioned, I was at that point putting the rod in the from the top rather than the bottom. Reluctant to use brute force, I decided to leave the assembly until we arrived at Nate’s birthday party, where more skilled assistance might be available.

Later Jill, Nate’s granddad and I wrestled with the wretched toy and beat it into submission. We had several false starts but we eventually discovered the most important component was a ‘‘cap nut tool’’, which was a grand name for what appeared to be a plastic tube offcut. This enabled the assemblers to hammer the final pieces of the axle into place without damaging the chrome cap nuts.

It was about this time that I worked out what ATV stood for: Aggravating Toy Vehicle.