LIFE LESSONS
A Lesson From My Grandfather About Hammers and Nails
Why Those Star Wars Figures Are Still Jumping to This Very Day
“I’ll get changed in there,” I heard him say in his certain way,
And I don’t know what made me do it, I don’t think it was deliberate.
Knowing how I was then (and how I am now), it was probably indecision.
I was paralysed with indecision.
I didn’t want to be walking out of the room,
Just as he was walking in.
I didn’t want the question about what I’d been doing.
Because, you know how it is, hammers and nails and all that,
I thought he’d be most interested in my activities instead of his own,
In how I’d been rearranging Mum’s shire horses again
Behind the glass that was not supposed to be opened (on pain of having my shins barked with her Dr Scholl sandals)
But it was just too tempting to play the Grand National with them,
To sit my Star Wars figures on their backs and send them over the Reader’s Digest hurdles.
So, yeah, I’d just had time to take Chewwie off the back of the leading cart horse,
But there was no way I’d make it across the room to the door,
And I thought my grandfather would know what I’d been up to if he saw me,
Because adults always knew what you were thinking,
What you’d been doing,
Where you’d been doing it,
And what you’d broken on the way.
That’s what mum had taught me.
We always know.
Except, in he comes, softly whistling Colonel Bogey,
And in the middle of the room he stands.
To take off his shirt — oh, the horror —
Because knocking up the new shelves
(Hammer and nails, remember; hammer and nails)
Is going to need the overalls.
And he doesn’t see me standing there, in the gap between cabinet and wall,
And he doesn’t see the rearranged horses,
Not even — how had I missed him? — Darth Sidius on the nag coming in last.
Grandad thinks only of the shelves he’s putting up.
As the proud man changes, he thinks of the hammer,
And the hammer thinks only of nails.
And the boy realises he’s been lied to,
And that they’ll be plenty more Star Wars shire horse hurdles to come.
