Life is full of nicks and scrapes
The toolbox looked familiar. I found it in the booth of an antique shop, "Daddy's Helper" running across the top of the metal box in scratched white letters.
It looked familiar because I'd had one back in the deep, dark past I refer to as my childhood.
I opened the box, its contents rattling against its walls. The set wasn't complete. Heck, the box was at least 40 years old. It was lucky to still exist. Inside the toolbox was a hammer with a wooden handle and metal head, a wooden ruler whose designers never considered decorating with centimeters, a T-square and a saw.
Yeah, a saw. A metal saw with teeth. A saw that could rip through a board _ or a small finger _ just like the one Daddy had.
The metal screwdriver was missing from the toolbox, but that was OK. It was the saw that people, polluted with today's reality, didn't believe existed. They refused to believe it to the point I was beginning to doubt the existence of the saw myself.
I pulled out the mini-saw, its blade the length of my hand, and ran my finger gently across the teeth. It was still sharp enough to cut wood.
I can see lawyers lining up right now, drooling uncontrollably at the prospect of suing the Mega-Realistic Toy Corporation for daring to build, and distribute, a device that was most probably forged by Satan.
My 2-year-old son has a toolbox. In it are wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers and a battery-powered drill _ all plastic. Could my son actually fix something with those tools? No, but he couldn't break anything with them, either.
Children were once free to roam the uncharted depths of the back seat of the Buick during a trip to the grocery store instead of strapped into a padded safety chair like an Apollo astronaut. They once roamed the neighborhood in packs without a parent to be seen. And they once rode bicycles without wearing more pads than a linebacker.
Were our parents bad people? No. Our society changed. We were once confident; today, we're afraid of everything. We're afraid discipline will get us arrested. We're afraid not giving our children the new PlayStation will isolate them from their peers. And, mostly, we're afraid of looking like bad parents.
I never hurt myself with my tools because Dad showed me how to use them. I'm sure I smacked my thumb with the hammer once or twice, but I considered that a learning experience.
Maybe I should buy this for the Toddler, I wondered, then shook my head and put the toolbox back on the shelf. I didn't want anyone to think I was a bad parent.
