{"id":2208,"date":"2014-10-02T09:24:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T07:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2208"},"modified":"2024-08-20T02:41:51","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T00:41:51","slug":"tool-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=2208","title":{"rendered":"Tool Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tool<\/a>The message comes at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Collin: Are you free tomorrow evening?<\/em><\/p>\n

I pause. Are you free?<\/em> Can mean lots of things. Of course, it can mean \u201cDo you want to get a drink\u201d or \u201cLet me buy you dinner for being awesome.\u201d However, it can also mean \u201cCan you help me remove a wasp nest?\u201d or \u201cI need help dumping a very heavy sack in the river. No questions asked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, it\u2019s 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, and almost no good messages come at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Could you give me a hand with something? <\/em><\/p>\n

With what? <\/em><\/p>\n

I need to put something together.<\/em><\/p>\n

Put something together? I look around me. I’m lounging on the couch, utilizing all three pillows. A cat is sleeping on my back, I have a warm glass of milk, and I am wearing a floral-printed Yukata. I don\u2019t exactly feel like a \u201cput something together\u201d kind of guy. But then I remember that Collin has spent his summer feeding and cleaning up the poop of my cat, the B Monster. I relent.<\/p>\n

Sure, I\u2019ll see you at 6.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bed frame, or it should be. I throw down my briefcase, wipe off my glasses, and walk around it slowly, taking it all in. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m doing this, other than it just seems like the thing to do. A dormant instinct overtakes my otherwise non-DIY personality. It\u2019s the same instinct which has me open hoods of broken down cars to scan the interior, the contents of which so foreign to me that they might as well be a PhD thesis on string theory written in spaghetti.<\/p>\n

I nod and rub my chin as Collin explains what needs to happen. He picks up a power drill. It\u2019s old and dirty and chipped and greasy. An involuntary buzz runs down my spine as the drill\u2019s whine fills the room. It feels perfect in my hands, a tool, a stocky conglomeration of metal and electricity whose misuse can destroy one of my fingers. I grunt as it clashes and grinds the metal. Soon there are screws and wrenches and nuts and bolts on the floor, ignored safety precautions rampant.<\/p>\n

For a short while our talk becomes that of manual task, of building something, of logistical problem solving. There is sweat and curses sans embarrassment. We are building something, sweat and curses come with the territory. We enter a euphoric passage of tools and work.<\/p>\n

It’s tool time.<\/p>\n

A question: why does this excite me? Surely there is some inborn masculine instinct being served here. The instinct to build something: a house, barn, plough, solid pine bed frame and loft. This was essentially lacking from my childhood. My father did sometimes ask me to help him with a household project, but my father\u2019s definition of \u201chelp\u201d had three parts. It meant \u201cDon\u2019t say anything,\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t touch anything,\u201d and \u201cStand in the corner and watch me weave a tapestry of vulgarity that could have a Norton Anthology.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was never allowed to get my hands dirty and so this aspect has not been a terribly large part of my life. However, when I am given the opportunity to work with my hands, I thoroughly enjoy it. There\u2019s a task, a thing which must be fully and physically completed and afterwards there is that sense of pride. I made<\/em> that. I fixed<\/em> that. Then there is beer and talk about women and trucks. Or maybe a stalk in the park to bludgeon something for dinner, like a small dog or a pigeon.<\/p>\n

Today, as we finish the bed frame, there is that moment of completion and success. Collin suggests a drink. Yes, we have earned it. My sore hands and sweaty armpits are badges of work. I drink red wine instead of beer and we talk of linguistics instead of trucks. Still, tool time was nice while it lasted. Maybe I\u2019ll go home and build a hutch for my Japanese robes.<\/p>\n

I’ll need to borrow the drill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The message comes at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday night. Collin: Are you free tomorrow evening? I pause. Are you free? Can mean lots of things. Of course, it can mean \u201cDo you want to get a drink\u201d or \u201cLet me buy you dinner for being awesome.\u201d However, it can also mean \u201cCan you help […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-zC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2213,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2208\/revisions\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}