The tools of self-knowledge

Know thyself, said the ancients, because that’s what makes us us. Unlike mosquitoes, orchids, even dogs, we are capable of self-awareness. Well now, I needed firelighters. Just inside the door of the hardware store stood a trestle table, the sort of place you go when desperate for a threepack of retractable tape measures.

On the table stood a pile of 61-piece toolkits. One had been opened and placed on top for inspection, in the manner of a watermelon on a fruiterer’s stall.

Of the 61 pieces, 12 were the sockets of a socket set, lined up in order of size. Socket-set owners divide into two sorts: those who put sockets back in the correct order, and those who have friends.

The toolkit also included a bunch of nine allen keys. Allen keys have two uses: to tighten the fastenings on kitset furniture, for which use they are provided free by the kitset furniture manufacturer, and to inflate the number of pieces in bargain toolkits. But the bulk of the 61 pieces was screwdriver bits.

Time was when you needed only two screwdrivers because there where were only two types of screw. There were Phillips screws with a cross on the top, and there were conventional screws with a single slot that had been painted over in 1954. To undo a conventional screw you scraped the paint out of the slot, inserted the screwdriver and started swearing.

There were 30 bits. Three were Phillips, three were conventional, and 24 were of no use. Each was magnetic and designed to fit the tip of a generic screwdriver handle. The generic screwdriver handle counted as another of the 61 pieces. As did, impressively, an additional dedicated conventional screwdriver and an additional dedicated Phillips screwdriver.

Completing the offering were the four handles and extension pieces of the socket set, a pair of long-nosed pliers, a pair of wide-jawed pliers and a pair of wire-cutters. And the whole caboodle, with plastic carry-case, was marked down from an improbable $79 to an only marginally less improbable $30.

R