Meet June Marchetti, who minds the front table on Saturday mornings

Sixth of seven. Ohmsville is a town we invented; the kit in it is real — a board of springs, a drawer of parts, a manual of projects. I am Nate Pruitt, and I have been asking the seven people who narrate this site the same six questions, one a week.

June Marchetti is Sal's daughter. She is home from college and she minds the front of The Electric Connection on Saturday mornings, which is when the small children come in with a grown-up behind them. She is one of the two voices in the Kids Zone — the part of this site built for eight-year-olds, where the parts are chunky blocks you snap together by tapping two of them. She talks to children the way you talk to a person who happens to be short, which is the whole reason she has the job. We talked at the front table, by the window.

Nate: You grew up in here. What was the table to you before you were allowed at it?

June: Something I watched. I grew up in the back of this shop — boxes, and the smell of the boxes, and my dad's voice out front all day long. The table by the window is for the little kids on Saturday mornings, and for a long time I was not allowed to sit at it. I was allowed to watch it. Then one Saturday my dad pulled a stool over and said, sit there. That is the whole story of how I ended up here, and I have not really left the table since.

Nate: The manual you keep under the counter. You and your father share a counter, so I will allow the same answer.

June: It is the same answer, and it is not a coincidence — it is what the table works out of. First Light, the first booklet. Everything in it is already on the board, so nobody has to be trusted with the drawer yet, and there is nothing in there that cannot be undone by pulling a wire back out. That matters more than people think. A small child will not try anything at all if they believe they can break it.

Nate: A mission? The missions are the grown-up side of the site — a run of circuits with a story over them.

June: The Pocket Pager, and I pick it for a silly reason that is also a real one. There is a little motor in it with a lump of brass bolted on one side of the shaft, off-centre on purpose, and when it spins it cannot go anywhere so the whole thing shakes instead. That is all a pager ever was, and it is all a phone buzzing in your pocket is now. Nothing I can show a six-year-old gets a bigger face than a thing that shakes because it is trying to go round and cannot.

Nate: The build you would hand a stranger.

June: The sun catcher, which in the grown-up manual is called the light meter. It is a little grey disc that light opens up — the more light falls on it, the more easily current goes through it — so you put it in the loop with a small lamp and the lamp does whatever the daylight does. Slide the sun up and the light glows. Slide it down to the moon and it fades away. That was the first thing I ever made happen myself, and it is still the one I hand over, because the thing that changes it is the thing you are already standing in.

Nate: And a game, since you have the Kids Zone.

June: Match the parts. You turn over a part and then you go and find the little drawing that stands for it — the shorthand a grown-up would put on a circuit diagram. It is a matching game, so nobody can lose it, and what it actually does is make a child look at one part for longer than they ever would otherwise. That is the whole trick. You cannot hand someone a part and say look at this; you can hand them a card and let them do it on their own.

Nate: What do you say when nothing happens?

June: That nothing happening is not a wrong thing. The first time I tried the sun catcher, both my wires were sitting on the same spring. That is just a thing that happens, and then you move one.

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June is a made-up person. The stories are real. Her page is June Marchetti, the Kids Zone is where you will hear her, and the strip her father's shop stands on is the town of Ohmsville.

Last one next week: Teddy Ruiz, who came in the back door to borrow a vice.