This toolbox was made for you

This was one of my Dad’s toolboxes. He owned several toolboxes, each filled with tools in no specific order. Despite the apparent disarray, he knew exactly where each tool was. His storage method was simple: if it fits, it goes in. Tools didn’t have conventional names to him; he called them all “thing.” Working with him could be stressful, especially when he was on a ladder, surrounded by live electrical wires, asking for a “thing” or “the blue thing”—the latter not necessarily blue, but the tool he urgently needed. In his vocabulary, tools were interchangeable; a wrench could be a “screwdriver,” pliers a “socket set.” We’d scramble through the toolboxes, hunting for the elusive “thing,” only to have Dad come down, reach in, and immediately find the right tool—a tool we somehow missed. This particular toolbox, which I made for him, typically housed a selection of hammers, old keys, and red and white fish bobbers. It made sense to him.