Interrupting his wife's home repair transaction with a strapping young handyman ostensibly there to fix a leaky pipe, Luke Greene of Nashville, Tennessee, returned home from the local hardware store in under 30 minutes, successfully having fulfilled his spouse's request for a left-handed screwdriver.
"It's actually ambidextrous," said Luke. "Even better, I figured."
According to Luke, he was mildly surprised when, one sunny Saturday afternoon, his wife, Cara, expressed a desire to have a plumber to come take a look at their kitchen sink. Although Luke hadn't noticed anytime wrong with the plumbing, he agreed. He was even more surprised, however, when, instead of their regular, paunchy, middle-aged handyman, a tall, blond, buff 20-something-year old named Tyler appeared on their doorstep.
Immediately suspicious, Luke questioned the young man as to his credentials, knowing that many a good Nashville man had had his wallet uncomfortably lightened by an incompetent plumber. "I'm no fool," he said.
Tyler immediately put his concerns to rest. "I'm not the plumber, I'm the plumber's son," he explained. "But I'm good at laying pipe, and I love to do it!"
Reassured by Tyler's confidence and his clear enthusiasm for the task at hand, Luke was only happy to help as best he could with the repairs. And, so, when Tyler reached for a screwdriver and exclaimed, "Shoot, I've only got my dad's tools, and he's right-handed," Luke, at Cara's suggestion, consented to run out to the hardware store for a left-handed screwdriver.
The seemingly simple errand wasn't as easily accomplished as Luke had expected. At the first two hardware stores he tried, the clerks didn't seem to care much about making sales. "They told me to stop wasting their time with my fool's errand and to get out of there," said Luke.
Undeterred, Luke stopped into a nearby Dollar Store and made his same request. The teenage female clerk told him, "I'm pretty sure all our screwdrivers work for both hands."
"Perfect," said Luke, glad to know that the new screwdriver would be suitable for use not only by Tyler, but also by their regular handyman, should Tyler's father return. Luke raced home and found that he'd gotten there just in time - Tyler's shirt was off, and he was helping Cara unzip her jeans; apparently, their clothes had gotten wet in the course of trying to fix the leak.
Luke presented Tyler with the ambidextrous screwdriver and stood by as the young man got the leak fixed in virtually no time; Tyler was indeed good with pipes. The ambidextrous screwdriver had worked like a charm.
Based on his own positive experience, Luke says that he highly recommends that all homeowners keep an ambidextrous screwdriver on hand at all times, in the event that they or their spouses find themselves dealing with a left-handed handyman like Tyler.
"When you're the man of the house, you can't take chances," he said. "Someone''s gotta keep an eye on things."
