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Do you remember those kids’ activity or puzzle books, with word searches and logic puzzles and spot-the-differences and find-the-hidden-objects and such? One of the staple items in that type of book is the trace-the-line puzzle. Usually it would be of a matching sort of thing (help the animal follow its rope to its favorite food) or of a avoid-the-dead-ends sort (which rope will let the explorer pull himself out of the pit?).

Little did I know back then that those puzzles were training kids for adulthood. The books tried to make it fun. If they wanted to make it more real and less fun, it would be something along the lines of “which extension cord should you unplug so you can move the fan to another room? If you choose the wrong one, you have to reset the clocks on two devices.”

The other thing the books don’t train you for is that you can’t just follow the rope/cord/line back to its source and then you’re done. You have to physically move the various cords to extract the one you need, and the other two cords do not easily let go of the one you want.

I propose the kids activity books should include a life lesson on the rope-tangle page, something like “Remember, if the explorer had used a rope organizer, he would not have the problem of needing to untangle them.”