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the
power of power tools
watching
my wife wielding a power tool is sort of like having Jason jump out of
a bush at you with a butcher knife on some dark Halloween night on Elm
Street.
scary. disturbing.
i don't mean she-doesn't-know-what-she-is-doing scary. i'm sure that after
she reads the little instruction booklet a couple of times she gets the
gist of it.
i mean scary in the way that something that is out of the ordinary can
be scary.
what's the word? abnormal?
she likes to say, "power tools are empowering." like she's doing
a do-it-yourself home improvement segment on Oprah.
this is her power tool, btw, not mine. it's not as if i'm talking out
of some male chauvinist don't-touch-my-shit kind of thing. i'm not all
that great with power tools myself, so i don't actually own any. i'm strictly
a socket-and-wrench kind of guy.
no, this power tool is all hers.
anyway, i remember exactly when she got into power tools -- power hand
drills to be exact. she bought a Black & Decker Fire Storm a few years
back after seeing something on tv.
"why do we need a drill?" i said after discovering it in the
garage.
"because," she said, "you never know when you'll need one."
i couldn't argue with logic like that.
but the need never seemed to arise, so the drill stayed in its handy dandy
carrying case, unopened and unused.
then one day, sure enough, i found a need. so i opened the handy dandy
carrying case and charged the battery pack. when it was fully charged,
i slammed the battery pack into the drill's handle.
i was ready for some drilling.
"where're the drill bits?" i asked.
"the what?" my wife said.
"the drill bits," i said. "you know, the shit you put in
the drill so you can drill shit?"
"oh," she said. "the woman who sold me the drill never
said anything about drill bits."
i rolled my eyes. women.
since i wasn't about to go out and buy drill bits just to drill two crappy
holes, i put the drill back into its carrying case, where it stayed never
to be opened again.
about a year later, i spotted a big box from QVC in the garage.
"whatdja get?" i asked.
"oh, i meant to tell you," my wife said. "a power drill."
"uh, why do we need another power drill?" i said.
"because," she said, "this one has a lot of neat attachments--five
of them. it even has a sander. plus it has more voltage than the other
one."
i wasn't quite sure what she meant by that.
"but does it have drill bits"? i said.
"oh yeah," she said with a knowing smirk. "i made sure
of that."
originally
posted 1.24.06|
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