Nervosaurus rex.

We're all a little jumpy now. Citizens against citizens. Lunatics shooting up concerts. Nuts shooting at Congressional ball games. Fat Man in North Korea threatening to drop Little Boy on us. There's so much to be grateful for -- and so much to be nervous about.

It's not surprising that the Fidget Spinner has become one of the most popular and most derided little toys of the 21st century. They give nervous hands something to do.

feel better?

Some people find it extremely distracting when others play with such things, though. Wikipedia says that some schools have banned them. I guess that it's a net loss when your nerve-relieving toy makes others nervous.

Now me, I know a little something about nerves. I grew up when nuclear holocaust was not just something we feared, it was something we expected. I didn't just bite my fingernails; I bit my toenails. I make coffee jumpy. I quit smoking a decade ago and I still want a smoke. I'd have been the Worrier King, if someone else hadn't grabbed the title years ago.

Despite all my fears, I would not let myself get some fidget spinning toy. That's for kids, not a grown man.

No, I got that toy at the top of this post. It looks like it might blow something up, but it's totally harmless. It's the Trianium Fidget Cube, billed on Amazon as an anti-stress/anti-anxiety and anti-depression cube. It's six sides of stress-easing goodness, with buttons to press, dials to turn, a ball bearing to -- do whatever it is you want to do with a ball bearing.

The button on top releases the kraken.

I thought it would be better to have this in my pocket than to bite my nails or jingle coins or beat a tattoo on the table during meetings. However, I realized as I sat near the head of the table at a meeting: this thing makes noise. The buttons and dials and switches click. In a quiet room, people can hear it. They want to know what it is and where it's coming from. And then I get paranoid that they're staring at me.

On the whole I think my stress-reliving toy just brought me more stress on balance. And I didn't even find it soothing when I was free to play with it. When you push buttons or spin spinners you expect something to happen; I find it frustrating when nothing does. The Trianium is like a flashlight with dead batteries. Click it all you want, ain't nothing happening.

Or is it? I have this idle fancy that the perfect combination of clicks and turns will set off a sequence that will lead to a Michael Bay-worthy explosion. Nobody who bought the toy has done it yet, but eventually one of us will.

Then one of us will be past worrying, anyway.