The Right Tool

It’s hard to imagine what thoughts may come from the simple act of peeling a peach.

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There’s a tool for every job; choosing the right one is critical. Today’s choice for me was unfortunate but instructive.

Sadly, Georgia’s meager peach crop is about over. They’re harder to find now than hen’s teeth. The only choices are the nubbin rejects.

Same with blueberries. Only the tasteless, pesticide-embalmed varieties from south of the porous border remain. Like white bread, their shelf life is long. Eaten, your shelf life shrinks.

This morning I eye the last plump peach in the bowl. Others see it, too. An avaricious nature will overrule any Christian virtue of sharing. I grab it. Quick.

The fuzzy skin distorts the flavor. It needs peeling. My tool choices are a potato-fruit peeler or a short paring knife. I recall my daddy’s advice: “Son, a knife is a man’s tool.”

The peeler is safer; the knife is, well, the man’s tool. I opt for it.

I pull out the sharpening iron, give the blade a good stropping. Satisfied with the razor edge, I start peeling.

Rings of peach skin fall in circles into the sink. Peach nectar, like love, can fill the air and cause a swoon. It’s easy to get careless with a sharp knife. Like a seductive kiss, dangerous possibilities are always near. There’s usually a price to pay. Today’s price is a sliced thumb.

I call for help. “Bring bandages, please.” The last precious peach lies wasted among the bloody peelings.

Having no peach and nothing else to do but ride out the pain, my wounded thumb and I convalesce by contemplating the inner connectivity of household tools and human nature. A stretch, I know, but we go with it.

With the right tool, when paired with vivid imagination, consider what might be accomplished anonymously and often with great personal delight. Metaphorically, speaking, of course.

Take tongues, for example. Like knives, they can slice and dice the corpus of our enemies (or our friends) in absentia and leave the bloody carcass of their character lying in shreds. All this carnage at a safe distance, too,

Then there are pliers. They’re helpful tools if anger gets a notion to pinch something, or somebody. Like small vices, we can stick the fictional fingers of politicians in the chokehold of our disgust. Squeeze the grip and hear their muffled screams much like a pricked voodoo doll. Now while the best revenge won’t pay the rent, it will allow us to gloat.

Ladders are dangerous tools, but we all use them. The bottom rung is crowded. We want the top. The risk/reward of climbing high must be considered. Vertigo is real, and the air is thin at the top. Everybody wants to be there, the top of anything, everything…the game, the job, and the wealthy. But there’s only one step at the top. From that lofty peak fate spins the roulette wheel.

Ah, the hammer. The cold steel tool of resentment can nail things air tight. Used as a crude bludgeon, it’ll make short work of driving the last nail in the coffin of a duplicitous friend or a stake through the heart of a bitter rival.

Screwdrivers are saviors. Life deals us defeats, winds of vicissitude confound us and courage abandons us. Hear as Macbeth asks: “If we should fail?” And Lady Macbeth’s response: “We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.” Tighten up, hang in there.

Pruning shears come in many sizes. They’re useful for trimming the stealthy hubris from any wisteria vine whose pride exceeds its allotted boundary and reaches for more. Imagine what an occasional pruning by the Master Gardener might do for our ego.

So many tools, so little space to praise them. Honorable mention goes to two: WD 40 and Duct tape.

With the attitude of WD 40, it’s possible to grease the hung-up rusty relationships of life with little more than a few smiles and kind words.

Duct tape, applied regularly to our own lips or our tweeting app, will bring about much needed silence and many will live happily ever after.

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Enough said on more about nothing. Just get the right tool for the job. You’ll be glad you did.

 

Bud Hearn
July 7, 2017