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We bought our tools and automobile parts from Pick-a-Part (although I don't even want to think about why people are junking cars with shovels and axes in the trunks). Years later, my uncle stopped by the family home to collect some of my grandpa's stuff and accidentally left with most of Ron's tools. I felt like I had betrayed us by letting it happen. Although I eventually boxed up and gave away his things after he died, I kept the tools that were left. The greasy hand prints were his, and attached to nearly every tool was a memory of working on a car together. Plus, I used them sort of regularly.
When I remarried, my new husband didn't understand why I was crushed when the marital-merging of tools made me feel like they were his tools. He used them more often and they went into his toolbox, which sometimes had a lock on it. I felt like I had to ask to use them, and I lost a bit of independence when I couldn't leave my screwdriver in the kitchen drawer without irritating him when it didn't make it back in his box. Ron's beat-up old toolbox, scavenged from a well-used Chevy's truck bed, got thrown out along the way in favor of something newer. When I found out, I was unexpectedly taken by the feeling that something familiar and comforting had been lost. More than a decade later, it shocked me that the only physical belongings I was willing to fight for in the divorce were the tools I came into the marriage with. He could have the car, TV, bed, dressers, and house--everything but the tools.
My brother came to visit shortly after the divorce proceedings started. He's an insightful person: he brought me some of his spare tools and organized mine. I was thrilled to have a collection started again, but after loaning them out and having people 'borrow' them without telling me, I feel again like I have to ask to use my own tools and it's time to make a stand. Often, I first have to make the uncomfortable call to ask if he (that's gender neutral 'he', of course) has the tool before I can ask for it to be returned. And just as often, whether the tool is sitting in my shed or he borrowed it without asking, the response is righteous indignation at the question and if he has it, at my request for its return.
I'm considering getting a set of pink tools. Call me crazy, but I think they'd be borrowed less often. And if you're ever at the junk yard and see a woman peeking in the back of every Chevy on the lot, it's me--looking for a weathered pink toolbox.
Yes, they make them!
Apollo Precision Tools DT9706P 39-piece Pink General Tool Set
Apollo Precision Tools DT0773N1 135-Piece Household Pink Tool Kit
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I've gone to the mattresses over my tape measure. I wasn't allowed to borrow his, so I bought my own, a nice one, kept it in the kitchen drawer. He kept taking it (kitchen is closer than the garage) then wandering out to the garage with it. He eventually took it over, after losing his own. When he left mine at a job site, I demanded he replace it. He did, with some cheapo Big Lots knock-off, thinking either I wouldn't know the difference, or that a woman wouldn't use it that much, anyway. I put it in his toolbox and demanded he buy me a nice one. He did, and called it my anniversary gift.
ReplyDeleteLater, he went to the kitchen drawer to use my tape measure, but it wasn't there. He demanded to know where my tape measure was. I told him he wasn't allowed to use it without asking, and he was welcome to go out to the garage and use the crappy one he bought.
Oh, and my mother bought pink tools. They, too, ended up out in the garage. Once they get used by dirty, greasy hands, they all look kind of gray.
I once got a pair of crappy Dollar Store scissors for my birthday--to replace the uber-cool haircutting-only pair that was used to strip and cut wire. What's the deal there?!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if anyone would participate in a women-only tool exchange. I can start the the pot with some spare sockets. :)