The Tool Drawer

The second drawer in the kitchen, under the counter where the microwave sits, is the tool drawer.

“Hey, paper does NOT go in here, only tools and stuff” I tell Julie after pulling some of her papers out of the drawer.

“Tools go in the tool box, your big one” she says.

“Some do, yes. But they also go in this drawer.”

“Why? That’s what a tool box is for? You have a nice tool box, Tim, and your gonna stuff all your tools in a kitchen drawer?”

“I like a tool drawer, okay? I grew up with the tool drawer.”

Actually, I think it was more affectionately called a “junk drawer” by my mother. And that’s really what it is. You can find anything in that thing. If you can pull it out first. It must weigh fifty pounds! Why the bottom of that drawer has never said “to heck with THIS” and completely fall out is beyond me. I think it is a competition, a test of wills between that drawer and my father. How much can he stuff in there, and how much can the drawer take before falling apart. Right now, it’s a tie.

And while you can find just about anything you could ever think to find, those with a faint heart dares not try. Most people stick their hand in a drawer, move stuff around until you see what you want. Do that with THIS drawer, and you may loose some blood and skin, or even a finger. Last time I looked in there, I spotted some old rusty sharp things, ten pounds of nails of all shapes and sizes, staples (the big, thick U shaped ones used to hold down heavy wire or something, not those wimpy little staplers your teachers always had on her desks back in school) screws, wires, rusty razor blades, washers, a broken watch, plumbers tape, electrical tape, an empty spool of Duct-Tape, three different Vice-Grips (my father could fix ANYTHING with Vice-Grips and Duct-Tape) some ceiling-tile wire, little empty clear bags which held some sort of washer or other at one time, an old can on Marvel Mystery Oil, and at least a three dozen other things. When I say this drawer is full, I mean FULL.

Of course, when someone says “It’s in the drawer” you KNOW which drawer they are talking about. They have the silverware drawer, the towel drawer, the napkin drawer, and the DRAWER.

I have the same thing on my Mac. I call it “Documents.” Everything gets stuck in there, and there is no rhyme or reason to the order of it. Saved phone numbers, Read-Me files for outdated software, half-completed FileMaker Databases, pictures of products I had planned to review but have not gotten around to it yet, and anything else I am doing a quick save of. You name it, it probably is in there.

Do a “Get Info” on my Documents folder, and it says there are 1,226 things in there for a grand total of 680.8 MB. That means each thing is, on average, 1.8k in size. (Or something like that) The truly sad part, though, is I just cleaned it out, and only kept those things I felt I needed to keep.

“So where do I put my papers?” Julie asks me as I take them out of my tool drawer.

“The one right underneath it.” I say, shoving the papers in that drawer. “But not in my tool drawer! Hey, didn’t I just buy some plumbers tape? Damn, I had a whole roll of it already in here…And I just found the keys to my old Buick I owned ten years ago! Cool! How did they get in here?”

Oh, did I forget to mention I just bought this house the first of December?

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Tim Robertson
publisher@mymac.com