I know everyone is different in their own special way, but…

When I was a young child, my parents walked into my room to find I had disassembled my cassette player, a children’s toy with extra buttons which integrated with special children’s books. I couldn’t understand why they were mad, since I was going to reassemble it as a compact walkman, at least in my mind. I think at that point my parents knew I would grow up to be an engineer.

Skip forward a couple decades. This evening, at 1AM, I was in bed and had been reading on my 3-year-old Kindle for an hour, and was about to go to bed. Suddenly, a thought occurred: I want to disassemble my Kindle. It took a few minutes to locate a plastic pry tool and a #00 screwdriver, but I disassembled the Kindle. It was rather boring: behind the back faceplate was a battery, a wireless module and a SIM card.

Reassembly was uneventful. It didn’t turn into a walkman.