COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
THE BORROWERS - Here in Michigan (U.S.A.) the nights have been dipping into the upper 30's (Fahrenheit, 2-4 Cel.) and the leaves are turning to their fall colors.
Once again, it's time for me to straighten out my garage so I can park my van in it when the snow comes. So, while some guys are watching football or thinking about the fall deer hunting season, I'm looking at the empty tool hooks on my garage walls, and thinking about how the time has come for me to hunt down "the borrowers".
You know: those people who are continually "borrowing" stuff without any apparent intention of returning the stuff.
Now, for the most part, I have pretty decent neighbors, but a few of them have really taken advantage of:
- (a) my ownership of virtually every hand or power tool known to mankind; and
- (b) my basic inability to say NO to someone who needs a tool I have.
"Short-term use"; that's the part they don't seem to get.
Take my next door neighbor - please. She's a single mom with an apparently good enough paying job to drive a brand new Land Rover ($50k U.S.A.) and take several trips each year; yet she doesn't own any yard implements, say a leaf rake or a simple garden hoe for weeding her flower bed, whatever.
It started out with her using one of my garden hoses to water her lawn for the first month after she moved in (it did seem a little odd since she had just moved from a house).
No less than once a week she's over borrowing some tool, or the proverbial "cup of sugar".
This spring, when she bought a new gas grill to have a backyard barbeque, she came over to see if I could lend her my propane tank "just for today and then I'll go get mine filled." Her empty tank has been sitting in her garage since the last week of May, while my tank is still hooked to her grill! Good thing I have a spare or there'd be hell to pay.
The neighbor's boyfriend, 35ish, is another trip. This guy drives a sports car, wears nothing but the best clothes and has never been seen lifting a finger around the girlfriend's house. So one day he sends her over to "borrow" an electric drill. No problemo, I've got three different ones.
Later I see him in their garage with the drill and a board in his hand, and figure he's assembling some kind of small furniture.
Weeks pass.
A few months pass.
I see him in the garage with some wood again and decide to walk over and see what he's working on. Turns out this guy is a part-time "wood artist" who sells carved pictures of flags and birds and such and has been using my drill ever since his died --- no doubt from overuse!
I calmly dropped the suggestion that he should pick himself up a drill, as a "business investment."
His response,"Yeah, your drill really isn't the right tool for the job."
Calmly picking MY drill up and removing the rotary file bit he had been using, I left with a comment to the effect that "I have a job at MY HOUSE that it is perfect for."
He didn't get it at all; he sent his girlfriend back to borrow it again a few days later!
This time I lied and said I had taken it to work.
Apparently, after this, he broke down and bought his own.
THE RECORD IDIOT BORROWER is a guy who lives up the street from me. First, having spoke with me only one time previously (when I walked down to introduce myself,) he comes down and asks if he can borrow my wheelbarrow, verbalizing the sentiment, "Every Eye-talyan (Italian) seems to own one".
He sends his teenager back with it a week later: dirty, scratched and dented to all hell --- me, I'm thinking, "Gee, his grass isn't even in, him and his old lady both drive brand new cars, couldn't the cheap bastard just invest in one?"
Apparently not.
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Like the next-door borrowers, weeks, then months pass.
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Hmm? "Oh yeah, "M" borrowed it". So I walk down the road to "M"'s house, where he is mowing his lawn.
"Hey Ed, what's up?"
"Well, I needed a sledge hammer and knew you were the man who could help me out."
With his typical smart-assed charm he replies,"So, you thought you'd just come down here and borrow MY sledge hammer, did you?"
"Actually man, you have MY sledge hammer, you know the big guy with the blue fiberglass handle."
"That's yours?"
"Not unless you have a second one you borrowed from someone else."
Strange, he seemed a bit insulted by that remark.
In Olde England there was a tradition of forgiving debts on the first of the year; the ancient Jews did the same every seven years; me, I make a serious effort to reclaim all my loaned out items before the New Year, every year.
Good neighborliness and Traditions be damned! I should just adopt that old saw about, "Never a borrower or lender be..."
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RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: This month we'll do an interview with the people behind this site, who do imagine Flash work, San Francisco's paper(media.) For now, visit the Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City site. It's an eye-opener!
