How Sasha pried off 8 keys from my laptop

Sasha had just turned three. We were all working on a game together. The girls were testing, I was at the laptop fixing code. Sasha sat nearby, drawing on paper, swinging his legs.

I left the room for the kitchen to pour another cup of instant coffee. Three minutes, no more.

I come back — and see: my laptop helplessly open, and on the table… in a neat row, with military precision, lie the keys. Carefully removed, arranged like in a museum.

I counted eight.

C, B, N, M, ">", "?/", right Alt, and Fn.

Sasha sits proudly, points at the "exhibits" and says:

— Dad, I fixed them.

I looked inside the keyboard. Most keys I could put back — they just snapped into place. But four keys surrendered without a fight: M, "?/", right Alt, and Fn. Their little plastic "butterflies" — the fragile mounts that hold a key in place — had broken.

Since then on my Asus TUF FX504 those keys have stayed that way forever. One of them — M — wobbles but still works. The other three never went back on.

And you know… I am not good at being angry with kids. I scold — yes, sometimes, always for a reason. But angry — no.

Sasha did not want to break the laptop. He wanted to help. He took it apart — and tried to put it back together. That is not chaos. That is exploration. Curiosity. A desire to understand how the world works.

We often scold children for broken things, but sometimes behind it is simply a sincere "I want to know how this works." To understand, you can just remember yourself as a child. How much was taken apart — and far from all of it went back together.

I have two cousins. One summer, while their father was still asleep, they snuck into the garage early in the morning and completely took apart an engine. Then everyone spent a long time putting it back together. But that is another story.

When I look at these slightly wobbly keys — especially M, which still serves me faithfully — I remember: our project is not about perfect code and flawless mechanics. It is about us. About how we learn, make mistakes, laugh, and keep going. Even with three keys lost forever.