Fucking kid takes my shit without asking all the time.
Not only does it piss me off, it drives me crazy because I’m old and can’t remember if I did something with it or finally decide he walked off with it.
My phone charger disappeared one too many times.
He just takes the Wall Wart and leaves the damn cord. That’s how I know he took it.
The Wifely Unit threw a damn fit when I super glued it to the power strip next to my chair.
I still have that fucker and I will GUARANTEE you that he has been through at least a dozen since.
Like Phil, my dad was supposedly a nice guy… until he had kids.
I dunno how I am still alive. Pop couldn’t have nice things because us kids would steal anything good. Remember those super-tiny ratchet and socket sets Snap On used to make? What would they have been? 1/8” drive? You could repair watches or do surgery with those tiny little tools. I found a set of them in Pop’s tool chest and figured he wouldn’t need them. I ran off with the lot and played with em… and stuffed them in my toy box when I was done. I remember him cursing up a bloody blue streak when he discovered their absence…and accusing everyone of theft, but I never put two and two together. I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch the big tools…but the little ones were obviously made for kids, right?
Couple weeks or months went by. Can’t remember if it was G.I. Joe, or maybe it was Major Matt Mason – but he was having problems with his space capsule and after I saved the day with those tools, I figured I’d do Pop a favour and I put them back where I found them. When Pop found them a week later he nearly pooped his pants with rage…”who keeps doing that!?!?” he gibbered, with a note of hysteria creeping into his tone.
I remember dad saying they were worth a couple hundred bucks which would have been huge money in those days. He still gets tetchy when I get too close to his tool chest…😆👍
Pops had a tool box we did not touch. They were tools that were issued to him by the Local Air Patch. If they went missing, it was a Letter of Reprimand. That’s why they came home with him every evening from work. Otherwise, everything else was pretty much fair game, and you only once forgot to put a tool back where you found it. He was more concerned with us cross-threading his pipe fittings, particularly the brass ones.
Thinking about it, Mom had a junk drawer in the kitchen that was full of tools and a couple of coffee cans on the top shelf full of screws and junk.
Even my kids didn’t wander off with our tools. I guess they knew they wanted to live to see tomorrow.
One of the early lessons my Dad taught us was to put things back EXACTLY where you found them. My mother, on the other hand, would randomly return things, especially tools, to the same general area, but not the exact same spot. Example: she would return a screwdriver to the same cabinet, but on the shelf with the wrenches instead of on the shelf with the rest of the screwdrivers. This behavior generated some ungodly cussing and raised voices (putting it mildly).
Dad had massive peg boards all along the wall behind and next to his work bench in the basement. When I was around 6 or 7, he decided it was time for me to learn to use tools so he traced around EVERY tool on those peg boards and I had no excuse for not putting a tool away. The big power tools went on the shelf below the bench and were more of a jumble but I preferred the unpowered hand tools anyway, especially the hand crank drill.
My son lived with me until he was 22, my charger plug and cord disappeared once so I decided I better have a back-up. I went to the local discount joint and found a few blister packs of plug and 6-foot cord combos in the bargain bin for $4 apiece, so I bought 5 of ’em. Then every few months I would pitch one into his room. Seemed to work, my shit never disappeared again, and it only cost me $20.
“Hell hath no fury like a Dad whose tools are missing!”
My Dad was not very handy, probably on purpose so he had a very small number of basic tools yet they still disappeared but I don’t remember ever getting yelled at. I am sure they were left on the creek bank behind the house building forts.
My brother and I used to marvel at how Dad could do the fine carpentry he did with absolute crap for tools. His saws and chisels were sharp, but otherwise looked like junk. Now I think I have a clue. Like the tip from last week about winding some electrical tape around your good extension cord to make it look like repaired old junk.
In the lab I worked in, we had a couple of tool drawers for troubleshooting instruments, but they invariably lacked the very tool I needed at the time I looked for it. The two essentials for the robotics line were a Japanese Phillips screwdriver and a ball end 2.5mm hex wrench. I got mad enough to buy my own and kept them in my lab coat pocket.
My old man was pretty picky about loaning his tools. You had to sign ’em out with the expected return date. He misplaced a hammer once and I was blamed. Months later we were standing under the back deck and I happened to look up and damn, there was his hammer. I rode him about it for a month.
When I was little I was given by my father a tool box that had the tools he felt I would need (sneak off his bench)to work on my own little kid projects. His plan seemed to have worked pretty good until I got into dirtbikes and metric wrenches were needed that’s when I remember him telling me hands off his tools and I was on my own.
Dad had a solution for that. An ass-beating does wonders for improving memory and responsibility.
Ooh that’s a sore spot with me.
I had three household rules –
Shut the doors
Flush the toilet
Put it back where you found it or where it belongs.
Didn’t always work. Years back, when craftsman tools weren’t made of chinesium, I treated myself to a new screwdriver set. Damn if is wasn’t a week later I see one of my brand new screwdrivers on top of the fireplace. The old lady used it and left it where she was working.
So the old lady buys a new day bed for the spare room, and simple rummages through my tool chest for tools to put it together. Not a high, hello, can I use these, fuck you, or nothing. I see here heading back with a small orange case that has some odd allen wrenches, but otherwise keeps my small tools – ignitition wrenches, feeler gauges, screw extractors. I wondered what the hell she’d be doing with that. I have two sets of allen wrenches in holders.
Later on the boy shows up to help and grabs my brand new ratchet. That got me simmering. I knew if I poked my head in to complain she’d go nuts. So I held back.
Long story short – the boy put my tools back. He knows to do this, and wipe them off if he was working on his car. The old lady? Nope. I had to go collect my stuff. All I’ve found so far is a gift box with a half dozen allen wrenches and a feeler gauge. No idea where the little orange case (With all the odd tools you need from time to time) went.