I grew up with a workbench in the garage, and I thought this was something every dad had at their house. They read the newspaper every morning, they drank coffee all day, and they had a workbench, whether they were handy or not.
My dad — who has never been very handy — hung his tools on the pegboard, and I occasionally borrowed them for my own projects. But, he didn’t like it when I used them because I wouldn’t put them away.
"Don’t play with my tools!" my dad would tell me.
What do you mean, "play with them?" I’m not playing with them, I’m working. You make it sound like I’m having a tea party with your tools or something.
"May I have some more tea, Mrs. Hammer?"
"Certainly, dear. Would you like some sugar?"
"That would be lovely."
"One lump or two?"
It didn’t help matters when my dad found his tools on the workbench, scattered among empty tea cups and a smashed sugar bowl.
When I got my own house, I wanted my own workbench. I'd never needed one before, and had no idea what to do with it. I just felt the urge. Like the salmon that swim upstream to spawn, I needed a place to stand and putter on the weekends.
It seemed like a thing guys did. We had workbenches in our garages, although we no longer had tea parties with the tools. Now it was craft beer or bourbon.
To be clear, I know plenty of women who have workbenches, and I built one for my wife, but she doesn’t let me use her tools. She got mad because I spilled sugar all over the workbench.
I worried I was overbuilding it, since most people are happy with wimpy workbenches made from 2x4s and a sheet of plywood. But I planned on doing large, heavy projects that required a workbench capable of holding several hundred pounds, like a car engine that needed a place to sit for several months, before abandoning the project entirely.
Now, I am not mechanically inclined in the slightest, so I have never actually worked on a car engine, let alone set one on the workbench. In fact, the biggest thing I ever put on it was when I showed my wife how much weight it could support and stood on it.
"This thing is a beast! I can put anything on here," I said.
And then I never put anything heavy on it ever again. In fact, I babied it.
I had put three coats of clear polyurethane on the top, which made it so shiny, it reflected the tools on the pegboard. So I covered it with cardboard so I wouldn’t ding and scratch it.
The biggest problem was that I had bolted the thing to the wall, so when we moved ten years later, I had to leave it behind. Besides, it was so massive, it needed six people to carry it.
I even built my whole office in my garage, and it looked amazing. Everything was exactly the way I wanted it, and the moment I was done, I had a premonition: "We’re going to move."
I mentioned that to my wife, who got irritated. Why would I think such a thing? We worked so hard to get into this house, why would we want to leave it?
We moved to Florida five years later.
When we moved into our current house, I decided to be smart about my workbench. There was only one way I could guarantee we would stay in our house forever, and never leave: I built it completely out of plywood, legs included.
Best of all, I can play with my own tools, have all the tea parties I want, and Mrs. Hammer serves honey instead of sugar.
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Hey, that's me!)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.