June 28, 2026

Gifts

I grew up in a lower-middleclass home. We weren’t poor but we sure as heck weren’t wealthy. We almost never went out to eat, and we only went on two family vacations that I can recall. Every year at Christmas, each of us kids got one really good present and a bunch of practical junk like underwear and socks and blue jeans. The worst present I ever received was a comb.

We also usually got one really good present for our birthday. The Summer before first grade, my brother and I both received brand new bicycles (our birthdays were only four days apart). I was really excited until school started and I had to ride that darn bike to school and back every day.

But the Christmas I was in first grade, I got the one gift I ended up appreciating more than any other gift I’ve ever received. I’m not saying I haven’t received a lot of excellent gifts over the years, but this one snared my imagination and received more attention than any other.

My parents gave me a Gilbert Erector Set. If you’re not familiar with the Erector Set, it was a collection of Zinc-plated steel parts — angles, flat spars, perforated flat plates, axles, gears, sprockets with matching chain, a 1/16th horsepower electric motor and about a Zillion tiny machine screws to put everything together with.

I suspect my dad had always wanted an Erector Set because he ended up helping me with it a lot — explaining how I could combine large and small gears on the same axle to either generate speed or torque, and how I could overlap pieces and attach them with two screws instead of one to create a sturdier joint.

I played with that set all the way up until sixth grade when I used my paper route money to purchase my first Cushman motor scooter. That’s when I fell in love with the internal combustion engine — a mistress that would supplant the Erector Set and teach me the real meaning of frustration.

It may just be that my dad showed an interest in helping me with the Erector Set or it may be that my parents were experts at observing and encouraging the unique sorts of activities each of us siblings was attracted to. Whatever the reason, that collection of mechanical elements determined the direction of my life right up to the time I entered the University of Texas, School of Engineering.

Now, if you know me, you know that I only lasted a single year in the Engineering program before I grew bored with the formulaic approach to every issue. I switched over to the School of Communication where Journalism and Marketing offered more creative latitude and held greater sway over my limited attention span. None-the-less, that innate love of mechanics I developed as a kid, still motivates me today.

Like most contemporary parents, I’ve been guilty of providing my kids with whatever gifts were trendy and popular at the time, rather than recognizing their innate aptitudes and encouraging those talents by providing useful tools.

What does it mean when today’s kids, beginning at a young age, spend entire days playing video games like “Grand Theft Auto”, and “World of Warcraft”? Are we intentionally grooming them for lives of violence or are we just pacifying their prurient interests in order to avoid spending our free time with them? Perhaps we need to reinstate the military draft so these kids will at least have a useful outlet for the skills they’re developing.

At the end of the day, the ONLY gifts of lasting value we can give our kids are an appreciation for absolute truth, and a balanced sense of self-worth. Everything else is just an expensive pacifier.

By the way, if you do happen to provide one of your kids with a modern version of the Erector Set, do not ever again walk through your house barefooted. Those tiny, errant screws are deadly!

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

― Mark Twain

Let’s talk. I’d really like to hear what you have to say, and it might even give me something to write about. Email me at guy@lawsoncomm.com.
I’ll buy you coffee and we can compare notes. I promise not to steal your ideas without permission.

The Relationship Cure

— John Gottman

How can a book written in 2001 be more relevant to our everyday lives than anything else written in the past two decades? Have we become so brainwashed by technology and social media that we forgot the one-on-one relationship lessons our parents taught us, or did we just fail to grasp them in the first place? Gottman provides practical and easily implemented techniques for beginning meaningful relationships in every area of our lives as well as repairing those relationships we previously put on the shelf. Above all else, he seems to understand that absolutely nothing is as important as the people who randomly cross our paths on a daily basis.