Henry has important work and responsibilities each day.

And like so many of us, that work is pre-empted by other facets of life, like sleep, meals, Cheerios snacks, diaper changes, etc.

Henry is the ever-changing grandson. Last weekend, myself and his grandmother were able to spend some with him.

It was an intense period of dispensing wisdom and accumulated knowledge. We came away much smarter for the experience, thanks to Henry’s teachings.

For instance, if Henry gives you a toy, you gladly take it, smile, look at it, then promptly give it back.

Or if certain toys are designed to work in certain ways, the challenge is to learn new ways to use them.

It’s sort of been my philosophy and maybe Henry has inherited it: Things may fit a certain way, but if you don’t want to read the directions or figure it out yourself, find an alternate way of using it.

For instance, staff writer Margie Trax Page donated a sizable toy dumptruck for me to take to Henry. It stands above his waist and has room to pile a bunch of toys. Or, as an alternative, dump the toys out and at the end of the dump part is a handle. In the dump position, you can grab ahold and use the whole truck to walk around.

Henry is doing a nice job of taking a few steps at a time, but it isn’t’t getting him from one point to another too quickly, so the truck can help out. But what if you want to have toys in the bed of the truck and still use it to walk around? Henry discovered you can just push it along with the toys inside and get where you want to go you still have all of your important toys.

Let some toy designer try to manipulate how my grandson plays.

Or take the large cardboard box diapers come in. You or I look at it as a place to pull diapers out of, or when it is empty, maybe place trash before taking it out for the hauler.

Henry sees it as yet another way to get around. One day he looked at the empty box, crawled over to it, pulled himself up and pushed the box across the room faster than you or I could get to the same point. Henry discovered the box was sturdy enough to hold him but light enough to allow him to glide across the room, on his feet, pushing the box.

Some of our discoveries came together. For instance, Henry, who celebrates his first birthday March 2, has a top. You push the handle at the top down rapidly and four plastic balls in a plastic bowl at the base go spinning around. The rub, as Shakespeare would say, is there is a door on this bowl so when you get the things spinning fast, you pop open the door and the balls come flying out.

First, we discovered it was rare when we had all four of the balls inside the top at a time because they found new homes under furniture.

But Henry and Gramps started thinking — we think alike a lot — what happens if you put something besides balls inside the top?

Well, we had been experimenting with Gramp’s white athletic sock. We had found a place on Henry’s foot for it, where it sagged just above his little knee. That was amusing for a few seconds. But we agreed it might be fun to put the sock in the bowl of the top and see if it would fly out. It didn’t. It just sat there and went around and around.

Henry got bored looking at it and so did I a little later.

I have to take credit for the next idea. What about putting Cheerios in the top instead? An even better idea: Put the Cheerios there when his mother isn’t looking.

It worked much better than the sock. Cheerios are much lighter and mobile. They came flying out of the top and scattered about the room. A good combination would have been the Cheerios, the top, and beloved beagle Casey. Unfortunately, Casey wasn’t there. She would have quickly eaten the spent breakfast food. But we had a good time anyway.

Here’s another tip I got from Henry. Do you read books? Try reading a page or two of one book, then have another book handy and read a page or two from that book, then another and another. Henry found the process fascinating. You might, too.

A few weeks before our visit, I was taking a shower and thinking about the trip. On the radio comes the Ramones song “I Want To Be Sedated.” It contains those haunting lyrics “I can’t control my fingers I can’t control my brain. Oh no no no no no.” I thought it would be a great song for me and Henry to dance to. Being the responsible grandfather, I thought about how we could get punked up for the song.

As an important accessory in my desk at work was what looks like a giant paperclip. (Bear with me on this.) In the middle of the clip is a gap with plastic covers on each side. You are supposed to stick the plastic covers in each nostril of your nose. The result is, it looks like you have a pierced nose and are wearing a giant paperclip.

The next step in my plan was to buy the song for 99 cents on Amazon. Grandfathers must be responsible citizens and not steal music off the Internet.

I grabbed the “paperclip” out of my drawer at work and put it in my camera bag. Days later at Henry’s house, Henry decided to check out my camera bag, came across the aforementioned nose paperclip and gave it an extra twist.

The result was when Henry and I danced to the Ramones, Gramps didn’t have the traditional, everyday pierced nose with a paperclip look. No, his was twisted and at an angle. He went the extra mile and we had a more fun, laugh-filled time dancing to these haunting words:

Nothin’ to do and no where to go-o-oh I wanna be sedated

Just get me to the airport put me on a plane

Hurry hurry hurry before I go insane

We had a great time dancing. I knew we would.

Henry can teach us all about looking at things differently, making it work in an alternative way. Who knows how he will use those talents as he gets older, at age 2, 3, 16, 40.

It boggles the mind.

Pass the Cheerios. Better yet, put them in the top and I’ll catch them as they fly out.