Of tools and bicycles

I am the farthest thing from being handy with tools that I can imagine so when our young neighbor rang the bell this afternoon, I was worried.

He's the only boy in a house of women, his grandmother and mother, and while many women are knowledgeable about and good with tools (Dr. S being the closest one to me), the women in his home don't appear to be in that category.

Thus, every time he has a problem with his bicycle (which is often) he comes over and gets my husband to fix it.

Actually, I think he reveres my husband a little, because of the motorcycles, of course, so the boy will use pretty much any excuse to come over and do some male-bonding with my husband.

As I thought, the problem this time was again the bicycle (his old one was stolen and my husband helped him refurbish an old one but now he has a newer one).

"Do you have an Allen wrench?," he asked, pointing to the seat of his newer bike, which was bent and he couldn't sit on it like that.

"Would you recognize one if you saw one?," I asked in return, adding that I had no idea what such a tool looked like and that my husband was not here to help this time.

"Yes. They're 'L' shaped and they do this and that," he elaborated.

"OK, let's go find one," I said, escorting him to our new Garage Mahal in the back of the house.

Neither of us could see any Allen wrenches (I, because I had no clue what we were looking for, and he, because there apparently were none visible), so I called my husband, who's at a motorcycle race.

"Are you busy?," I asked. "Yes, what's up?," he answered a little anxiously, probably imagining I was calling about some household emergency.

I told him what was going on and he told me where to find the Allen wrenches and I let him off the hook, literally, so he could watch his race (which I could hear roaring in the background) in peace.

I took the Allen wrenches and marched back to the front of the house with my young neighbor to attempt to fix his seat. He instructed me how to do it and, incredibly for me, I fixed the seat nice and tight.

"Wow! My husband would be impressed," I told the boy.

"Why?," he asked, curious.

"Because I'm not a tool girl, I'm more of a shoe girl."

"Well, you fixed it," he said nicely, bestowing on me a smile shiny with braces.

Off went our neighbor and his friend to bicycle the afternoon away and I returned the tools to the garage, feeling somewhat empowered and a lot wiser because I now know what an Allen wrench is.

How I managed to live all these years without knowing that, I do not know.