If I Had a Hammer

(This was printed originally in the Fall 2001 issue of the The Central Review, the literary magazine of Central Michigan University. This essay made me the winner of their first Student Writing Contest. Because it's so hard to find now, I figured I'd reprint the piece here for those who are interested.)

During Spring Break a few years ago, while bored with my Sony Playstation, I was seized with a rabid fit of spring cleaning. After all, I had the week off from school and nothing better to do, so I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and toilet brush and set about doing those things that I'd been putting off for...well, ever since I moved into my new place four months previous. Now some people might have found the task insurmountable or at least tedious, but not I. No, I found this orgy of cleanliness to be rather soothing and, in fact, downright meditative. Scraping the congealed mélange of grease and dust from my stovetop and scouring the hardened specks of toothpaste and shaved whiskers from the bathroom faucet really allowed me to get in touch with myself, to find an inner peace, and to ponder profound questions of the universe. To be honest, some of these questions really weren't all that profound. They were more like the cheap wisdom found in fortune cookies or at the end of a particularly grueling game of computer tai-pei: pithy phrases that seem to promise enlightenment but don't follow through. You know, stuff like "Has anyone ever cleaned behind this toilet before," or "How the hell did the Cheetos get there?"

There was one question, though, that was so profound that I ruminated on it for days. While I was attempting to hang a framed poster for the Roadkill Cafe ("You Kill It, We Grill It") from a nail that I was beating into the wall with the worn heel of a battered wingtip, I thought "Why is it that whenever I really, desperately, need a tool, it's always a hammer I need, the one tool that I don't have?"

Think about it. Have you ever been in dire need of a screwdriver? Of course not. Screwdrivers are tools that, if you don't have one handy, you can always find something else that works just as well: a pocket knife, maybe, or sometimes a credit card. But there is no suitable substitute for a good hammer. Oh sure, you can try to use your shoe, or a rock, or, and I don't recommend this, your TV remote. But none of those ever work as well as the real thing; instead, you end up frustrated, with scraped knuckles, and every time you click over to the Cartoon Network you get some guy hawking zirconium in Spanish. Trust me, I know from experience.

The hammer is an indispensable invention. In fact, it was probably the first tool developed after fire. It certainly seems like a hammer would have been necessary to chisel the first wheel out of rock. Hammers were definitely in use during the middle ages, when blacksmiths used them to forge armor and weapons out of raw steel, and there was definitely a hammer around in Jesus' time in order for him to be tacked up to the cross. In fact, without hammers, there'd be no civilized societies.

In spite of all this, though, I never thought much about hammers until I moved away from my parents and into my own place for the first time. It was then that I began to realize just how important and necessary a hammer is, and how frustrating it can be not to have one. As soon as I tried to hang a picture on my mobile home wall and I found that Scotch tape and a thumbtack wasn't going to work, I saw all the versatile uses for a good hammer. Yes, you can hammer small pointed implements into walls, but you can also sculpt beautiful works of art out of stone with the use of a hammer, or even make music; after all, a piano's strings sound when they are struck with, yes, hammers. Thor used his hammer to create thunder and lightning and to fly, and if somebody cuts you off on the highway, you can follow him home and bash out his headlights with a hammer. Indeed, as they say, you could hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening, all over this land. A hammer is truly a marvelous work of human engineering, and I had to have one.

But how was I to get a hammer? Now, the more commonsensible of you will probably ask a very simple question: "Why don't you just go out and buy one?" Well, I have two very good reasons as to why not. One, call me effeminate, but I'm not the kind of guy who hangs out in hardware stores, scratching himself and buying things that he will probably never use, and thus it would never occur to me to buy a tool until I actually needed one. And two, come on, I was a young, single college student! When I actually needed something, I didn't have the money to buy it just then, and when I did have money, buying a hammer wasn't as big a priority as, say, getting laid. So buying a hammer was out of the question.

What other options did I have? If you're of a less-than-scrupulous sensibility you'd probably say, "Borrow someone else's hammer and conveniently forget to return it." Well, I'm too honest for that. I couldn't in good conscience steal someone else's treasure; I mean, what if they needed to bash out someone's headlights, huh? Think about it.

It seemed that the only feasible alternative was to wait until someone gave me a hammer as a gift. So when Christmas came around and my family asked me what I wanted, I told them I wanted a hammer.

"A . . . what?" they responded.

"A hammer," I said. "You know, a hefty piece of steel attached to the end of a long stick, you hit things with it. A hammer."

"Why a hammer?" they asked.

"Because," I said very patiently, "I never know when I might want to sculpt a beautiful work of art out of a stone, or make music, or bash out someone's headlights. Duh!"

So much for that, I thought. One hammer coming up Christmas morn. On Christmas morning, I was at my parents' place (I had spent the night there), and was anxiously waiting to open my presents. When the time came, I tore into the wrapping paper and extracted a shiny new . . . screwdriver.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" my family asked.

"Noooo," I said. "I wanted a hammer. A screwdriver is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a hammer. What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

"Well, can't you pound things with the blunt end of it?" they asked.

"It looks like I'm going to have to, doesn't it? Philistines!"

It went on like this for years. They'd ask what I wanted for Christmas or my birthday and every time I'd tell them the same thing: a hammer. And every time, they'd give me a new screwdriver. Well, everyone except my brother, who would misunderstand me and think I said I wanted to get hammered, so he'd go out and get some vodka and orange juice and make me screwdrivers. What was it with these people? Finally, this past Christmas was different. I spent Christmas Eve night at my parents' place, as usual, and the next morning when I got up to open my presents, what did I get? Well, a socket wrench set. But I also got a hammer!

I was so excited! Finally, the tool of my dreams! Sure, it was cheap and small and the head was covered in a peeling, greasy, black lead-based paint, but so what? I didn't have any kids and I sure as hell wasn't going to lick it. Besides, it's the thought that counts.

I couldn't wait to get home and try it out. All through dinner, it lay cradled in my lap. As we sang carols around the piano, it was nestled safely in my pocket. On the drive home, it sat serenely next to me in the passenger seat. As soon as we came through the door, I quickly unwrapped it, ripped it out of its cellophane covering . . . and watched in mute horror as the head fell off.

Oh my God! I thought. I've killed it. Frantically, I tried shoving the head back onto its wooden handle, but it fit too loosely. I grabbed some Scotch tape and tried to tape it back together, but the paint was too greasy for the tape to take hold. Everything I tried was to no avail. It was an ex-hammer. Sadly, I gently and somberly carried the remains to the garbage can and laid them to rest.

Now you must understand that I wasn't mourning the loss of just a simple inanimate object. Rather, I was mourning the loss of what it represented. The hammer was the foundation of civilization. Without hammers, we wouldn't have schools and universities to teach us the knowledge of the ancients and give us the ability to move forward; we wouldn't have hospitals that allowed us to heal the sick and prolong our lives; we wouldn't have cities and factories and churches and technology. Without hammers, we wouldn't be able to hammer out danger, or a warning, or love between our brothers and our sisters, all over this land. Without hammers, we would be nothing more than animals. I wasn't mourning for the loss of a hammer; I was mourning the loss of our humanity.

Oh well. There's always next Christmas, I guess. Until then, this battered old wingtip seems to be working pretty well.