As a moving in present, my sister and her husband kindly gave me a tool box. Even as I unwrapped it, I knew what lay within, and a surge of adrenaline swept through my veins. On opening the box all manner of devices stared back at me: hammer, spirit level, tape measure, assorted screwdrivers, clamps and an army of allen keys.
Now I've never been one for DIY and about as practical as a cat, but there is something vaguely exciting about owning tools. I might go so far as to suggest that it raises my manliness level another notch, without really knowing why. Perhaps some degree of genetic cave-dwelling man joy persists from my hunter-gatherer past, and is expressed solely through the ownership of tools (or in some people through the proliferation of body hair).
As if to demonstrate that my thought processes had moved on little since our troglodyte past, I immediately set about using every tool that I could for no apparent reason, with gratuitous tightening of any available nut and bolt on offer. I also started a collection of all the 'loose' nails, screws, more allen keys and tool-based paraphernalia that I could find, on the off-chance that I might one day need to repair something and have just the right equipment to carry it out. I'm willing to bet that I won't since everything seems to have it's own unique size and shape and is completely unwilling to multitask. And when my mate loaned me his drill, my initial action was to pretend to be a robot whilst revving the machine, and my second thought was of mild panic that I had to make a permanent hole in one of the walls.
To further demonstrate my lack of manliness, I don't actually know what all the tools are or what function they could possibly perform. I've made an educated guess where I can, but suspect that some of them will remain safely tucked up in their moulded positions within the box. And the final, erm, nail in the coffin of masculinity came when I was unable to tighten a screw to the desired tautness, and had to rely on a female friend to finish the job. What a tool!
Haha - as you say Nick, you will now be the owner of a growing collection of 'spare' screws, nails, washers, bolts, hooks etc none of which will ever be useful for anything else.
ReplyDeleteYou will also join the club of jar and container collectors, to put them in. Peanut butter or jam jars work best although those small Marmite jars are pretty good for washers....
I still have a shelf full of them started in my teens, and I know as soon as I dispose of any I will immediately need them!!!!
I used a box so far, but I suspect as the collection grows I will need to separate out the assorted bits and pieces into categorised groups, hence the need for jars down the line. I have a battery recycling jar already established though!
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