I have just seen the scariest toy in the world. It’s called Perfection and it’s my worst nightmare. You set a timer and have 60 seconds to put dozens of small yellow plastic pieces of various shapes into dozens of matching holes. The timer ticking sounds like the opening of “Sixty Minutes” on steroids.

“Hey, BABS, it’s FUN!” yells Axel, age six, who seems to be speaking in capital letters this summer. “This is not my idea of fun,” I say.  BECAUSE when the timer goes off there’s this TERRIFYING snap and all the pieces explode up into the air.

This seems a lot like writing to me. The clock is always ticking, the pieces don’t fit, the whole thing feels like it’s going to explode and all we want is PERFECTION.