The professor most likely should have been that glutton-for-punishment soul who shows up at University on the first day of classes and declares himself an art major. Instead of architecture.  (My favorite line of this video clip is: ‘you will be paid less than a high school drop out working at a fast food restaurant.’)

His artistic bent (partially) explains why he feels compelled to dream up exceedingly complicated solutions to what most people would consider simple problems. You say: ‘could you hang up some conference posters on the wall in our building.’ He says: ‘Sure, I will design a two-thousand-layer plastic picture frame with cone protrusions. And spend five days installing it. Five consecutive battling-every-inconceivable-obstacle eighteen-hour-days. Not that I, person relying on three boy-children for my social needs, am counting.

So yes, it is never dull chez nous. And, judging from the preponderance of masking-taped structures lying around our un-dull house, the apple will probably cling to the same mystifying tree.

The artist invited some colleagues over, after last night’s unveiling-of-the-picture-frame. It was well after the boys’ bedtime when the first of the fellow artistes showed up, but the Gort lingered at the bottom of the stairs, excitedly, ready to show off his made-of-tape-and-metal-hooks robot to any who would feign the slightest interest.

He dug out a recent collage of pencil-drawn robots and showed them off to one of the professor’s students. ‘Oh, so you drew a robot and then you made it?’ the student stood amazed at the seven point five year old’s thought process, ‘these were your plans?’

The Gort looked at him, a mixture of surprise and seven year old incredulity. ‘Noo!’

As if to say – who would do that?!