Rusharound

Though he won’t be eligible for a driver’s license for about 16 more years, River is now the proud owner of a new red car, thanks to Santa (a.k.a. GeeCee and Poppy)!

Since we are going to be in Hingham for Christmas Eve and Christmas, we decided to play elves a few days early and assemble the car tonight. Happy Solstice, River!

Because it’s our first pre-Christmas toy-assembling, we decided to take lots of pictures and laugh a bit, aided in large part to the Radio Flyer’s Chinese origins.

The first thing we noticed as we opened the box:

The car is Chinese, from Dong Guan. Sounds suspiciously like Don Juan…Will this car help River get all the ladies?

Or will he need to have perfectly coiffed (photoshopped?) hair like the kid on the box?

But on to assembly.

Luckily Rush and I “speak Ikea”  – that is, we can interpret language-less, pictogram instructions that come with this sort of thing.  Unfortunately,  Ikea must have hired away all the good pictoram talent because these instructions had a number of flaws.  For example, when they wanted to show an enlarged drawing with a magnifying glass, the artist failed to draw the part the critical part that was to be enlarged.

It also came with some unforgettably useful operation instructions.  (Translated from Dong Guanese and snarkified by Sarah and Rush in italics):

“To ensure safe performance of this car….”
How does one define the ‘performance’ of a foot-powered wooden car?

“Make certain that anyone who uses this car has been fully instructed in its operation.”
Have you met my 11-month old?

“Never ride the car at night.”
…he goes to bed at 6:30 and even he wasn’t fooled by those headlight stickers.

“Never ride the car in wet weather.”
It _is_ a convertible.

“Always wear shoes when riding this car”
My son can’t walk yet.  Shoes?  What are they?

“Ensure that an adult has followed the assembly instructions.”
Is that a question that River is supposed to ask every time he ‘starts’ the car?

“Do not ride this car near … …cars and other motor vehicles”
I guess this means no joyrides on Storrow Drive?

“These instructions are valuable.  We suggest you keep it with other valuable papers.”
To-Do:  Take Radio Flyer instructions to bank safe deposit box.  Yeah rightWhat they forgot to include:

“Warning, decorative steering wheel is not very responsive.”

“Do not operate vehicle unless you’ve had both naps.”

In the end, it works great!

Thanks Poppy and GeeCee

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 7:20 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.