Sep 11, 2018 3 min read

I don’t have many hobbies, but I do like to scrapbook occasionally. It had often bothered me that my husband only spent his time working, so I suggested that he take up a hobby, as well. When I suggested it, I didn’t think it would affect me much. I mean, I knew he would spend money on it. But I figured an old car to tinker around on meant that he would be in the garage and I would not.

However, we are in a phase where we really enjoy one another’s company again. (I guess marriage is cyclical like that?) Hence, you will find him hanging in the kitchen while I wash dishes – he even dries them sometimes – and you will find me sitting on a chair in the garage with my Kindle while he works on the car.

This weekend, he was ready to crimp some connectors onto some wires and couldn’t find the pliers he needed. He asked me if I saw any green-handled pliers lying around. I didn’t, but I set the Kindle down and helped him look.

There was a pair of them on the work bench, but they were not the ones he needed. They were shorter and more angled than the ones he sought. I looked on another shelf and found another pair, but they were also angled and short.

Thinking that perhaps they had fallen off the front of the car into the bucket of used oil, I took a crowbar and fished around in there for anything that didn’t belong. No luck.

He suggested a drawer in the toolbox that might be holding them, and I tried to open it, but it kept catching on the drawer above it. I used the light from my phone to peer behind the stuck drawer and could see a pair of vice grips had come open and were jammed on the back of the drawer. I grabbed a screwdriver and poked around at it for a few minutes, to no avail.

Out from under the car by this point, my husband held the light while I pressed the tab that releases the drawers from the track. I wiggled it out, but still saw no green pliers.

“There they are,” he called out joyfully.

“Where?” I asked.

“Right there,” he said, picking up a pair of black-handled pliers with a small green stripe on the edge.

“I thought you said they were green,” I commented while I tried to replace the drawer on the track.

“They have a green stripe,” he replied.

“Never in a million years would I have told you I had found your tool and offered that pair of pliers to you,” I laughed.

He chuckled as he went back to the car and began crimping his connections.

“God sure has a funny sense of humor,” he said, “in how different he made men and women.”

I finished reattaching the drawer and picked up my Kindle again. “Yes, yes he does,” I thought. “But I don’t care as long as we’re happy together.”

I need some new memories to scrapbook.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.