THE PLASTIC KEY

Eyob Urban

Today marks his third month in the United States, and it was only getting worse for the six-year-old boy. He thought to himself, “What am I supposed to do? When do I go back home?” His adopted family tried to help him understand that he has a new family that loved him desperately and wanted him to enjoy his new home. They presented to him an array of things to do, from reading mystery books, getting dirty in the sandbox, to watching his favorite television show, “Wishbone.” They tried anything that would help him move forward. To the boy, nothing would be better than going back 7,584 miles across the world to his little house on a hot, unpaved, road. All he had were the memories that slowly slipped his brain, turning to distorted dreams. On a day that seemed to be another boring, agonizing day, the little boy woke up not knowing this day hid the secret to joy. While the boy was roaming aimlessly around this palace-like home, he stumbled on his siblings playing with odd-looking toys. These toys were rod-like with grooves running along the sides of them with special tips that allowed for a connector to link multiple rods together. They came in sizes big, medium, small, and tiny and each in grey, blue, yellow, and white respectively. The connectors were strange objects to glance at, but were simple in functionality. Some looked like snowflakes; others looked like ladders. The boy’s bored soul found something that reminded him of home. It reminded him of when he and his brother took their makeshift cars through the hot desert sand of Ethiopia or when they took a sword made of wires to the head of whoever was the antagonist. Except these toys weren’t made of recycled wires, they were made of hard, durable plastic. Oh, how he missed when he and his brother roamed around, not bound by an invisible fence that went around the perimeter of their green, suburban yard. They missed the freedom they had to run wild in unknown villages, forests with swamps, or the bustling city of Addis, Ababa. But as for the boy, the discovery of K’nex replaced his longing to do something with a key to unlocking his imagination. With this new skill to imagine, he could roam free to new places and remain inside the parameters of his new home. He no longer knew what boredom was. He would play for hours. Playing with these odd toys late into the night, sometimes two hours past his bedtime, until he would finally fall asleep at 10:00 p.m. after being exhausted from the best drum solo with

drumsticks made of K’nex, or from driving in the Indy 500 with his K’nex steering wheel. He started being able to make distinctive objects out of them. “Look, Mama and Papa, look what I made!” exclaimed the boy. Gleaming down, his father laughed at the sight of the boy so proud of his one-dimensional house, shouting, “Oh, wow cool!” His mother followed along in the steps of her husband and said, “Good job Ian,” with a slightly unmoved face. The boy knew they weren’t sincere, but understood they were trying to be kind. However, this sparked an intense fire and will to create something more soothing to the eye, like the Empire State Building or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Whatever it was going to be, to the boy this creation had to be perfect. The young boy hurried to his room, slamming the door shut, not out of anger but of an urgency to finish before the last stroke of midnight. His mind raced, so excited the boy didn’t know what to make or even where to start. After about ten minutes, he concluded he needed to start with destroying his other projects. It was sad, but he knew this project required as many pieces as he could scavenge. The moment after demolition, an idea came to him. A smirk, like that of an evil villain plotting his revenge, appeared at the corner of his mouth. Piece by piece his hands connected rods to connecters, connecters to rods. They moved so fast you would think his lineage must have had the sharpest, fastest shot in the West. It felt like with every connection an hour passed, as if time forgot its laws of the space-time continuum. He started with the base and slowly moved up, careful not to use the wrong colors. The project finally met its ending. The boy stood back and gazed at the work he had done. His mother walked in astonished at what her son had created. A job well done thought the boy as he saw his mother gawking at the accurate model of the Eiffel Tower. She yelled for the boy’s dad, “Daniel! Come and look at this.” “Woah! That’s impressive.” The boy saw only sincere admiration from his parents and felt a sense of accomplishment and joy. K’nex, and its “Connecting Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math with Imagination,” led the boy to grow up knowing his passion for building and creating was worth chasing. Like all of us, the boy faced a dreaded decision of giving up a childhood toys due to the clock never ceasing to tick. He knew he had to get rid of the toys or play with them. He felt that they were going to waste collecting dust in his mother’s basement closet. To him these toys were more

than plastic. They were keys that opened a world of creativity. He finally made the decision to give that old measly, dusty box of K’nex to a juvenile detention center near Dubuque, Iowa, where his brother worked. He did it in hopes that some other kid lost in the land of boredom can experience the joys of life’s creativity.