You see, this is how a good afternoon can turn bad.
You need two woodscrews. About yay big and about yay long. To fasten a board to a wall. A five-minute job.
You get down your jars of woodscrews you’ve been carefully saving for 10 years. You have about 3,000 or so.
You spill all the screws out on the floor and go through them, like a miner sifting stones in search of a nugget.
You face facts after going through them for a half hour. The two woodscrews you need are not among the 6,000 you have picked through.
You get in the car and drive two miles to the building supplies store, knowing that, even though you’re the owner of 12,000 woodscrews, you’ll probably have to buy a package of another 100 in order to get two.
You spend a half hour going through every box and bag in the store and finally find what you need in a plastic package of seven. But because they’re in a package, you can’t hold them in your hand to check them for their yayness. Nevertheless, they look like the right ones.
You remember suddenly that, among your many screwdrivers, you don’t have one to fit the screws you’re buying. So you pick one off the shelf.
You also remember that you’ll need a drill bit to fit the two new woodscrews so you go on a search. This store doesn’t have them.
You pay for your purchases and leave the building.
(Warning: readers prone to dizziness or nausea might want to be seated for the rest of this column.)
You go to another building supplies store, one that has drill bits. You describe your new screws. The clerk shows you various options. You go out to the car, get the screws and bring them in to show him. He shows you what bit would fit. You say, “Hey, wait a minute, I already have one of those,” and leave the store.
You get home, go back to the project you were working on and realize the following: The screws you have bought are too small. In fact, you already have several dozen that same size and held many of them in your hand a mere half hour ago.
You go back to the store, armed with more precise measurements. You want two screws a size bigger than yay and half an inch longer. You make the swap with the clerk, leave the store and head home.
You realize, halfway there, that having bought a screwdriver to match the woodscrews which were too small and which you have now returned, you now own a screwdriver which is too small to drive the proper-sized screws you hope you now have in that bag in your coat pocket.
You go back to the lumber supplies store for the third time in less than an hour, this time to exchange the only other thing you bought when you were first there two trips ago. You find the proper screwdriver and swap it for the other one. It costs 80 cents more.
You leave for home again, veins in your face about yay big, when you suddenly realize the drill bit you told the clerk at the other store you didn’t need because you already had one at home, well, I don’t know how to tell you this, but, now you do need it.
You go back into the second building supplies store for the second time in a half an hour, and tell the same clerk you were wrong and yes you do need a bit. He looks at you as if he thinks you need more than a bit. You buy the bit and hit the road.
You have made five trips to two stores and spent almost 90 minutes and a total of $9.41 for two screws and the proper tools to install them.
You remember that when you get home, you have 24,000 screws to clean up off the floor.
You become emotional. A tear forms in the corner of your eye. A big tear.
About yay big.
©1993 Jim Hagarty
