It’s much easier to take something apart than to put it back together. That saying has never stopped me from taking something apart, but it has proven to be true. Ever since I was little, I have been fascinated with how things work. Whenever one of my friend’s toys would break, I would insist that we take it apart and “fix” it. That last part of the plan never did seem to come together, but I learned quite a bit about how things work. My crowning achievement was taking apart an old, dead computer. Of course, I didn’t manage to fix it, but I got to see processors, ram, and hard disks for the first time. To a 10 year old, that was pretty cool.
	Since then, I have gotten a little bit better at putting things back together. My most recent challenge was an old fishing reel. Penn discontinued this reel in 1980. It’s the biggest reel ever made, and one of them was featured in the movie Jaws. When I finally got it apart, after much prying and frustration, I found that the entire inside of the reel was filled with grease. I had my work cut out for me. After several hours of degreasing, polishing, and then (lightly) regreasing, it was done, and ready to go back together. It didn’t look like new, but it would work like new, and that’s all the fish care about. After another hour of twisting and tightening and tracking down sprung springs, I was down to the final screw. I reached down for it…and came up empty. After a bit of frantic searching, I found it lying under the couch, and the task was done. Something had finally gone back together right.
	Of course, my passion for taking things apart and learning how they work doesn’t end with broken computers and old fishing reels. Actually, the “machine” I most want to understand is so small that one needs a microscope to “take it apart.” Cells fascinate me. How can something so tiny do so many complex things? How do they form the complex structures that make up multicellular organisms? How can we manipulate them to do what we need?  We’re learned a lot about the so far; we’ve gotten through most of the “taking them apart.” I hope that I can be part of the research to “put them back together” into hearts, livers, and kidneys, allowing people to live lives “as good as new.” (386)