The Tinker is a proposal to establish and an invitation to join an order of itinerant house guests, charmed Tinkers who apprentice domiciles in order to conserve residential space and energy and explore human dependency requirements (people, machines, substances) so as to understand, motivate and improve nuclear family child-rearing and geriatric care. Dr. Riley, a college English professor, believes that intellectual rhetoric and academic charisma can no longer compete for youthful regard with electro-chemical stimulants, and that any American living room is more hospitable and educational than any classroom. Married with children, he feels that masculine, WASP individualism past the age Christ dies in us is elitist, hegemonic, anhedonic and ecologically destructive. Only literate and/or "loving" married couples can display for youthful guests the equality, forbearance and sporting language required for the progress of gender parity and democratic justice, and for the preservation of our human families and planet.