At dinner the other night, several friends bemoaned how their grandkids don’t tinker. They don’t take their toys apart. They aren’t interested in how their bicycles work. They don’t ask how things work.

One of my friends thought it was because of the electronic toys they have. After all, you can’t take an iPad apart.

He has a point. Intellectual curiosity now runs toward how apps work, how many levels of a game someone has achieved, how much music can be packed into an iPod.

Back in the day when dinosaurs walked the earth and dirt was young, kids took things apart. Everything. If they wanted to know how their bedside clock worked, they took it apart. Sometimes, they even put it back together correctly. Most often, either Dad stepped in to refit part A into slot B, or Mom threw the mess out. Getting greasy in the garage with Dad learning how to oil a lawnmower was a rite of passage. Making a mess out of a kitchen learning how to make chocolate cookies was more fun than unwrapping a tube of chilled dough and slicing it.

My grandson wants to know how his games are made. Not his board games, although he is curious about them. He wants to know how his electronic games are made. His father explained about writing apps using computer code. He may design the next great gaming app, or send a rocket to Mars, or figure out how to make you credit card tamper-proof. Now, he wants to go to a programming camp this summer. His mom hasn’t told him that everything he wants to learn requires a background in math. She’s keeping that secret for a while longer. He’s not going away to computer camp this summer,though. He’s six.

His younger brother is more interested in taking toys apart, mostly his brother’s toys.

I wonder what will happen if the older brother writes programs and the younger brother learns to fix things with his hands. It will be interesting to watch.