Some assembly required

So here’s a new twist on that timeless image of Dad sitting on the living room floor on Christmas morning trying to cob together a bicycle with all the wrong tools and two left thumbs.

My son, Nicholas, plays a hugely complicated computer game in which the player is a Great Leader, guiding a civilization from the stone age right through to the development of interstellar starships.

One of his presents was an “upgrade” program that allows new technologies, new strategies, and other thinga-ma-jigs which are apparently a must-have evolution of the game.

But when we tried to load the New-and-Improved content, the computer balked. Incompatible, it said. Then it shut the whole program down entirely.

No advice, no suggestions, just — dark. Game over.

I imagined Hal 2000’s glowing red eye staring at me. Sorry, Dad. Why not take a stress pill and lie down?

Naturally, calls to the tech support center went unanswered. While Nicholas wrung his hands, I floated in on-hold limbo, treated to vast amounts of 70s cheese whiz pop music.

The game’s tech-support website, meanwhile, proved about as helpful as a tablet of Mayan hieroglyphs.

Out of frustration, I set off into a maze of fan-supported chat rooms, where hordes of 12-year-old boys trade strategies, gossip and (lucky for me) some incredibly helpful advice.

Following their instructions, I surfed around until I found two separate “patches” for the computer program, which I managed somehow to download.

(Confident the entire time that I was introducing a digital virus on par with Ebola, but we appear to have dodged that particular fate.)

When we finally popped the new game disc back in — voila. It started up with all the modern, glossy zip that Nicholas had been hoping for.

Now he’s hard at work leading his civilization into the history books. And like all Dads before me, I’m milking my small victory for all its worth.