Colliding with Rube Goldberg

Recently our email, twitter and facebook have been filled with those of you who sent us the OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” video.  We are honored that it made you think of us and blessed that we get to build this kind of stuff all the time in The Big Deal Warehouse.

We set out several years ago to build contraptions to involve the audience, illustrate the Good News in a creative way and encourage parents to find a victory homes by being creative with their kids.

Simply hand a child a box of blocks and watch him instantly create an architectural masterpiece.

It is this wonderful way in which we are made. We strive to create and construct.

Without instruction we will push the blocks over, roll a ball, swing a bat,  even send a flying figure down a zip line to topple the stack.

Build it, break it down, rebuild and so on is the wonderful way in which we are made. We are made for relationships. Things connect. People connect.  Contraptions and their effect on humans happened long before Milton Bradley built the game Mousetrap.  Da Vinci was long into the process of stacking things up and knocking them down.  The Romans used their brilliance for roads and war tools.

The Venetians created glass.  Henry Ford put steel, wheels and a bucket of bolts together to make the car. He also did this in a massive contraption known as the assembly line.  Rube Goldberg saw the entire industrial revolution as labor-intensive contraptions.  His editorial cartoons in the 30s and 40s made him a household name, gave him a national following and a contest that still is strong today.

We build detailed contraptions and yes, they are labor intensive. We sketch and storyboard them out in rough form. We weld and construct so the parts will collide and topple and bump into each other at the correct time and place.

No one ever forgets the contraptions we build as pieces whiz by or fly overhead.

No child ever forgets the role she played in one of these contraptions.

Kids and parents remember. They tell these things over and over and then, they go to their playrooms, living rooms and garages and build something together.

As we are constructing, building and preparing for the contraption we must work together.  We disagree on how parts are supposed to function. We make mistakes.   We agree and solve together. We learn how to react and respond to situations. We make silly physics blunders. One moment we proclaim our brilliance, followed by the most ridiculous attempt we have ever seen.

We work through that.   We fail. We succeed. We fail again. We change and keep going. Read the following run on contraption sentence carefully:

One thing bumps into another thing and that thing sends something spinning until it collides with that heavy thing way over there, that drops on those two things which launch that (no, not that thing!) over the heads of those people.

This is how relationships work.   One person bumps into another who sends this one spinning and toppling over.  You get it.  This is what we teach to parents.

Until you are spending time building in the floor, on the table and maybe even out the attic window with some clothes line and an old boot tied to a pulley with your kids, in all kinds of situations they will not know how you react to some situations in life.

Our motto is written on the side of our orange 1950 Chevy truck.

Building contraptions that hold families together.

So stop reading. Go get a box of blocks, bolts, clothespins, or left over garage sale items and build a contraption with your family.  It doesn’t have to do anything.  It simply has to be an exercise in relationships.

But please keep the video camera close and send us the short movie.

…how the toy was rescued from the top of the bird feeder.

…how that old boot out the attic window kicked over a can of water for the flowers.