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The baby gate finally went up. The kid had offered to build it, but he declined to read the instructions, declined his mother’s help, wanting to just figure it out like LEGO. “RTFM? Read the frickin’ manual, the first law?” I said to him sunnily, breezily, quizzically. “I think even your dad would tell you that.” He put the gate together. His mom pointed out where he’d gone wrong. (“So one of you has read the instructions,” I said, amused. His mom sighed.) “Missy, you’re getting a gate!” the youngest one said, a few times. Each time I reminded her that I was getting a gate, that the gate was for me, not for the scrappy canine scamp. He over-torqued the tension rods, complaining it was “still flexing,” while his mother repeatedly told him to stop. He was striving to make something that would never loosen, that would be like a part of the wall. “A little flex is okay,” I finally said, “like a bone that doesn’t break.” I’d recently explained to him that, resilient though a child may be,…