A Dented Toolbox and Rusted Tools

One of the greatest memories I have of my Grandfather Currie is he was a man who loved to work with his hands. He had this old hand-built shed in the backyard, which was next door to my childhood home, and he would spend many hours in there. I would come home from school, drop my stuff at my house, and then rush next door to spend some time with my grandfather. If I couldn’t find him in his chair in front of the TV sleeping or waiting for me, then I knew where he was, outback in the shed.

            The shed was hand built by him from wood; I believe he gathered from everywhere. The outside was a grayish wood hue, and the inside was a mix match all kinds of different woods. One of the walls was a garage door he found, somewhere, I have no real idea where he got it from. And the floor to this shed was the dirt under it, he didn’t need to put a floor in, God did that for him.

            Now, my grandfather had every tool known to man in this little shed or to my childish eyes it felt that way. The walls of tools, old ones, new ones, but nothing was thrown away. The old lawn mower, we still had it and would use it for parts to fix the even older lawn mowers. An old shove my grandfather made by hand, sit comfortably by the door waiting for me to gawk at it. I still not sure how he made that shove, and to tell you the truth I don’t want to know. It sits laziness in my mind as a magical item made by a magical grandfather who could fix anything with his hands.

            But the one item above everything else I remember is his toolbox. It was a giant metal box he must have for years before I was born even before my sister was born, and it was old. At one point in time it had green paint wrapped around it, but over time the paint had been chipped away, to allow the underside of the toolbox to rust a little. There were countless dents in the walls of the box and countless battle scars along the face of it.

            I can still to this day as I write this smell the heavy melt and oil of the toolbox. The dirt floor mixes with the oils and sweat of a man hard at work.

            When I was there helping my grandfather with whatever was needed to be done for the day, he would send me to this box telling me to grab a tool from this drawer or that drawer. I was the only person who could find the tool needed in the pile of old rusted handles in the drawers.

            My grandfather understood it didn’t matter how clean or new the tool was as long as it did the job, then it was worth your time and was right for the job. It is a lesson I still carry with me to this day. In fact, I have come to learn sometimes the older looking tools, the ones with the rust and dents in them, are the best tools because you know they can hold their weight in any job.

            I thought about these tools and my grandfather’s toolbox as I was reading a part in ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. (I know, I come back to this book far too much in my blogs. I don’t blame you for rolling your eyes at it; I do every time I write the title of that haunting book.) In this part of the book, King is talking about the needed tools for writing, and your skull is the toolbox in which they are being held. The tools of the craft are grammar and spelling, well maybe, they are some of the tools of the craft, not all of them. But King argues as a writer you need to master these tools before you can be a great writer or a master yourself.

            As Pablo Picasso put it, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you break them like an artist.” And I agree, mostly, to a point. If you had made it this far in my post, then I’m sure you had picked out where I miss spelled words, or my grammar has fallen short, or my syntax is a little off but I hope, the point of my words are not lost on you. I hope, just for a moment, you were reading my words and nodding your head thinking to yourself my grandfather was like that. You as I hope we all can do, recall walking into our grandfather’s house to see them sleeping away in their chairs.

            I’m sure, and I hope you are not tossing up your arms up saying to the high heavens, “I’m done with this fool and is writing because it is so bad.” And if you are then, I guess it doesn’t matter what I say after this point because you more than likely didn’t make it here.

            But back to what King was saying and I want to agree with him. Grammar and spelling are highly important parts of writing and if you are a writer then at all times you should be trying to improve those skills. I am doing it now. I study grammar and spelling daily, and I also fail daily at them as well.

            And yet, we both know the main point of writing or should I say creative writing is not the grammar or spelling.

            My sister and I had this conversation last night on the phone about how I am overly self-conscious about the places I lack when it comes to writing. It is no fault of my own, you see. My toolbox (my skull) and my tools (grammar and spelling) are a little rusted or dented. I was born this way, or so Lady Gaga tells me, and I have dyslexia, which makes it hard for me to write. I’m sure if you know me you have heard me talk about this before. It is something I keep coming back too, I can’t help it.

            However, my sister was telling me about the problems she was having at school she once taught at with another teacher. She was an English teacher (she is dyslexia by the way), and she was teaching the class with all the students who were like her and me. The other teacher was teaching the students who didn’t have problems with reading and writing. This teacher was a grammar Nazi and only cared about academy writing, but the kids in my sister’s class only cared about telling stories.

            She would call me every now and then to say, “Chase, you have to read this story.” Next thing I knew I was getting an e-mail from her with a poorly written story (spelling and grammar wise) but with some of the best plots and characters I have ever read in my life. I would read them with my jaw on the floor at how great these ‘problem’ children understood story craft.

            But to my sister dismay, these kids were seen as the hopeless ones. One poor girl in her class couldn’t read past the second grade, she was in the eleventh grade at the time. My sister didn’t know what to do to help them or how to keep their spirits up because everyone around them was calling them dumb.

            What these kids don’t know is the more they practice at writing, the better they will become. The parts of their brains where the dyslexia is held will start to grow smaller, it will never fully go away, but it was shrink over time. Now, it is not easy for these parts of the brain to grow smaller and it takes a lot of work, but it can be done.

            Dyslexia will still be there. It will still make it hard to see, to hear, and to write but there are ways to work around it.

            Even if that wasn’t the case, should we remove the hope for these kids to be writer or storytellers from their minds? I mean, they can become an artist, right? They can learn how to draw or paint or sing and share their stories in those forms of art, but writing or writing as a living is off limit to them, right?

            I want to say no. I want to say they can do whatever they wish and you more than likely want to agree with me, but I’ll tell you, it doesn’t matter what you say. It didn’t matter what anyone said to me. When I found my passion for this craft, it doesn’t matter how dented or rusted my tools are because I’m going to do my best to write a great story. I’m not here to write a great academy paper that no one will ever remember. I’m here to write a story where the world in the tale comes to life, and the characters feel real to you.

            I’m not asking for us to not tell anybody who wants to be a writer and has a dented toolbox it is going to be easy. God, no, that is not what I’m saying at all and trust me that person already knows how hard it is going to be. I don't want anyone to take away my difficulties to write because it helps drives me to be better.

            What I am saying is I hope you understand where I am coming from. I hope if you know someone like me you’ll go out of your way to help them. People like me have to rely on others to pick out the mistakes hidden to us, it is just a part of the game, but that shouldn’t take away from our stories, and it doesn’t. As my grandfather believed it doesn’t matter what the tool looks like as long as it did the job and does the job well, then it was a good tool at the end of the day.

Cheers,

Chase