Original text:
Lay out your tent body with the door facing up. Place a stake at each corner, through the loop at the end of the webbing. (Note: Insert all stakes into the ground at a 45 ̊ angle with the tops facing away from the center of the tent.)
Revised text:
Lay out your tent body with the door facing up. Then try to extricate your two-year-old, who has crawled into the collapsed tent body. Retrieve tent stakes from your four-year-old and attempt to place a stake at each corner through the loop at the end of the webbing … even though this is actually impossible because your four-year-old has already buried several stakes in the sand box. (Note: Attempt a reasonable angle for the stakes you can find, but let’s be honest; trying for 45 ̊ is a fool’s errand.)
Original text:
Pull the webbing taut so that you attain a straight line but do not distort the shape of the tent.
Revised text:
Pull the webbing loosely around your two-year-old’s small wiggling body while she giggles and pulls the webbing in the opposite direction. Answer some of your four-year-old’s many questions about poisonous African snakes. Direct all other reptile questions to Mommy, who is conveniently running errands.
Original text: Assemble all poles. Each sleeve and clips are color-coded to the correct poles.
Revised text: Stop four-year-old from attempting to pole vault with a half-assembled tent pole. Distract both kids with juice boxes. Assemble all poles quickly by yourself, and then hide them behind the ash tree so they’re less likely to be stepped on and bent.
Original text: Starting at A1, insert the matching pole through the sleeve. Repeat this step for the B and C color-coded poles.
Revised text: Starting at A1, insert the matching pole through the sleeve. Repeat this step for the B and C color-coded poles while answering four-year-old’s various what-if questions like, “What if ALL the roads were actually a giant water slide as big as the Moon, and you could go this way and that way, and then it all emptied down into a huuuuuuge pool full of dolphins that made you an ice cream cone in whatever flavor you wanted?”
Original Text: Insert one end of the A1 assembly into the middle ring pins. Repeat this step for B1. Only these two points will have three pins.
Revised Text: Read and reread this simple sentence five times with 0% comprehension while four-year-old seizes sledgehammer and runs around screaming “ZOO-ba-da-bah-YAH-bah-ZAH-bah-DAH-ba!” to the cadence of Sousa’s “The Washington Post” march.
Original Text: Carefully lift the tent and set the poles on the pins at locations A2 and B2. Repeat previous steps for pole assembly C.
Revised Text: Despairing of any possibility at ever successfully completing these absurdly long and needlessly detailed instructions, hastily jam tent poles through any sleeves available. In blind panic, anchor pins in the soft wet clay soil of the lawn, and then gracefully vault, gazelle-like, to intercept two-year-old before she executes swan dive from trampoline’s edge into sand box below.
Original Text: Next, attach the C-clips to each of the three poles from the bottom up. Pole D follows the seamline from points C1 to C2. Insert one of the ends onto the ring pins and bend over the top of existing poles.
Revised Text: With promises of popsicles and episodes of “Fireman Sam,” coax both children into house, where there is AC and peace of mind for Daddy … and beer.
Original Text: Next, insert the opposite end into corresponding ring pin. Repeat the process for pole-assemblies E and F. Pole E follows points B1 to B2. Pole F follows points A1 to A2 (Fig. 5).
Revised Text: Ya know what? *#%$ the ring pins and their corresponding pole assemblies! What have they ever done for Daddy, besides lay insouciantly in the damp grass, mocking him?
Original Text: Attach C-clips to the rest of the pole assemblies.
(Note: Where poles intersect, there is a hook-and-loop webbing attachment. Pass webbing over intersecting poles and through the D-ring and then back onto itself. (Fig. 6))
Revised Text: Stuff everything into available canvas bags. Devise plausible “explanation” for Mommy as to how the tent is not assembled and both kids’ faces are encrusted with sticky residue of popsicles and cracker dust.