Early this morning I dreamed that my mother had a battery operated camping lantern from Sears that I assumed someone, a great grandchild perhaps, had taken apart and left in pieces. But when I asked her about it she told me it had simply fallen apart sitting high upon a shelf where none of the little ones could reach it. Because she keeps such things for emergency lighting should the electricity go out I took the box of lantern parts to my shop expecting it to be an easy fix.
But when I started putting the lantern back together nothing seemed to fit and I became frustrated. The parts would change their shape as I was putting them on the lantern. Sometimes they would become parts to something else altogether like toys or tools. Hours passed while what should have been an easy fix wasn't. Just about the time I would get the lantern reassembled it would fall apart again. And sometimes, if I worked slowly enough I could see the screws reverse themselves out of their holes and fall to my work bench as if an invisible man with an invisible screwdriver was following along behind me undoing all my efforts.
It was only when I turned the base of the lantern over that I discovered the problem. There on the bottom molded into its plastic base it read, "Proudly made in Greensboro North Carolina by members of the Greensboro Partnership."
I tossed it in a neighbor's trash can and bought Mother a new lantern made in China.
