Talk of the Town - Christmas in January January 15 2004

When you buy a home, it’s not enough to get into regular mortgage-type debt. You need new merchandise for the new palazzo.

This tendency accelerated with astonishing centripetal force at the end of 2003. My spouse has a home-based business. She therefore can go on an annual Internal Revenue Service-sanctioned spending spree in the acquisition of capital equipment. I don’t know what capital equipment is — it just sounds better than “stuff.”

So there’s a supply column of delivery trucks triple-parked in front of our house. Each vehicle contains a January Surprise, final delivery on an item charged in December. Each disgorges something, a chair, desk, table or computer, sure to result in a credit card statement longer than a proclamation from the mayor of Munchkin City.

“It’s a write-off!” she assures me. I am not assured.

I also don’t understand. All year long she doesn’t pay taxes, now she gets to acquire all these giant Cracker Jack prizes. With my paycheck, the government attaches a giant Electrolux and hits the power suction button.

It’s also that time of year when furniture stores make nutty promises in an effort to sell you last season’s end table. Six months same as cash! Pay no money until April 2044! Confederate war bonds accepted at par!

Given the quantity of upholstered gewgaws pouring through the front door, I am doubtless party to these Byzantine contractual arrangements. Somehow it all comes down to me making payments on a 37-year-old sofa when I’m in the Sunshine Nursing Home.

This feeling of financial inadequacy is sharpened by a sense of shame about what I do, or don’t do, for a living. Mostly, I sit at a desk. It’s not glamorous and certainly not physical. After years as a cardiovascular slacker, I have achieved a level of fitness requiring a hit of oxygen just to brush my teeth without getting winded.

Enter the Delivery Guys. When you take delivery on a lot of stuff, you meet them. Delivery Guys come in all shapes, sizes and moods. Some are friendly. Some are surly. Some are funny. Some are obliging. All want a tip. And all make me look bad.

Not that I’m doing anything wrong when they show up. But these guys move stuff for a living. They hoist heavy things and sweat and strain. This is something I have spent most of my life trying to avoid. I am a firm believer in the ancient Chinese philosophical tenet: “Never do anything standing that you can do sitting down, and never do anything sitting down that you can ignore by taking a long nap.” Or something. Those ancient Chinese philosophers were deep. Asleep.

Even if I’m having the best writing day of my life, even if the prose is flowing effortlessly and magisterially, I somehow look like a decadent fop next to the guy with an end table on his back. One of them asked me for a Phillips-head screwdriver. Now, it just so happens that I know what a Phillips is. It’s the one with the pointy tip.

But finding said screwdriver? That’s another story. When I was in the old house, I could barely find the Phillips-head because I only used it once a year to change a bulb in a light fixture by the front door.

When you only use a tool once on an annual basis, you’re on a nodding acquaintance with its whereabouts the other 364 days. And that’s fair. The screwdriver doesn’t ask me where I’ve been after a five-beer Saturday afternoon in some sports bar, and I don’t require it to show up for work on a regular schedule.

But now that I’m in the new house, I really can’t find the damn thing. And Delivery Guy needs the Phillips to assemble a desk for my wife’s office. So I look in the toolbox, but I’m just stalling for time.

Because a toolbox is the last place you’ll find my screwdriver. To me, a toolbox is a mausoleum for all the tools you never use. For tools you need, easy access is key, so you put them in a place you go to frequently, such as the kitchen cabinet with the potato chips.

Meanwhile, the clock is running. I’ve looked up, down and all through the house — no Phillips-head. Delivery Guy is politely standing by, even as it becomes abundantly clear the alleged Man of the House has no idea where his tools are.

But I’ll tell you this. In an emergency, I can always be counted on to find the potato chips. You don’t have to put a desk together, but sooner or later you will get hungry.

glen.slattery@creativeloafing.com

Glen Slattery, ruffled and regular, lives in Alpharetta.