Ask Aunt Dot: The tools come back different

From the mailbag at [email protected]

A READER WRITES:

Dear Aunt Dot,

My neighbor Gerald has been borrowing my tools for eleven years and returning different tools. Not worse tools, mind you. Sometimes better ones. I lent him a claw hammer in March and got back a ball-peen that looks older than my father and hums a little when it rains. My wife says let it go, we are coming out ahead. But I counted my toolbox last week and there are three tools in there I have never seen in my life and one I am fairly sure I buried with my first dog.

Do I say something to Gerald, or do I keep quiet and see where this goes?

Coming Out Ahead in Ypsilanti

AUNT DOT ANSWERS:

Listen here. Life is full of mysteries, and a fair number of them live in your own toolbox. Best not to question the ones working in your favor, but I had a neighbor once whose porch swing came loose every July without fail. Same swing, every June, fresh as new. Same swing, every July, pulling out of the post. She never did figure out whether it was a gift or a punishment, and I think that was the point.

Now and then you stumble onto a puzzle that could be blessing or curse, and you have got to decide if it is worth the untangling. Tools are funny that way. You think that hammer is older than your daddy? Well. Some things are older than old. The May Day parade of 1964 went into the lake and the horses came back looking satisfied about it, and this town still talks about those horses with more warmth than it talks about most of the living. You take the good with the weird and you keep moving.

Say something to Gerald or don't, but do not do it out of curiosity. Do it because you are steady, because you are the kind of person who knows the value of what he owns and what he does not. If the thing is old and it hums and it is his, you either walk away clean or you invite him for a beer and let the conversation find its own bottom. Your wife is onto something. You are coming out ahead, and that is rarer than you know, in ways I will not bother explaining because you would not sleep right after.

The world is full of swaps you never agreed to and cannot reverse. The best you can do is keep your grip steady and make sure you are holding the right end of whatever you picked up. Sometimes that is wisdom. Sometimes it is just good sense about hammers. Either way, it gets the nail in.