You Don’t Choose the Hammer, the Hammer Chooses You!

This is a just for fun story of how my big yellow hammer came into my life. I like telling this story so I thought I might as well post it for your enjoyment!

I’ve never been the type of person who insists on having the best tools. I’ve never been able to afford that! In fact, I grew up making due with whatever I could find. However, there are times when having a good tool is well worth the cost! In my opinion, knives fall into that category! But a hammer? I wouldn’t ever spend extra money to buy a good quality hammer. A hammer is a hammer right? Well, I admit that some hammers are better than others and if I were using one every single day for a living, I might consider it, but that isn’t me at all. My big yellow hammer is a more expensive one. So… why did I get it? How much did I pay for it? Well... I almost paid my life for it!

It happened when I was younger. I was newly married and didn’t have any kids at the time. I was serving as a youth leader in church. We had planned a summer trip with the youth to go see some sites in the Salt Lake City area which is about four hours away from where we lived. The town we come from was a smaller town. Salt Lake City is a bigger city and is part of what they call the “Wasatch Front” which is basically just a conglomerate of cities along the Wasatch mountain range in Utah. All these cities have grown into each other and, have turned into one giant monster that I liked to call “up north”. I don’t like the big city. I never have, and I still don’t. I was riding in the car with our congregation’s bishop (similar to a pastor). I’ll call him Brother J. He grew up in a small town in Wyoming and worked as a civil engineer. He had been in the construction industry all his life.

So here we are, two small town guys in a big Chevy Suburban full of kids driving through crazy rush hour traffic in a big city. We got onto the freeway but there was construction and before long, traffic came to a stop. There were five lanes in this spot because of the on-ramp/exit ramp and we were right in the middle lane. We were at a dead stop for maybe five minutes when I looked over and noticed a hammer sitting on the side of the freeway. For whatever reason, I thought it was funny and I had one of those moments where your mouth just says whatever unintelligent thing comes into your brain! I said, “Hey, there’s a hammer on the road.” I really didn’t even mean to say it to anyone. It was just an observation that come out.

What I didn’t expect was that Brother J snapped to attention and starts looking around excitedly for this hammer. I pointed it out to him and he exclaims, “that’s a good hammer!!! Go get it!” I hesitated. I mean we were stopped, but whose hammer was it? Why was it there? Would they come back to get it? Was it worth the bother? Also, what if traffic started moving again. Then I realized that brake lights in front of us were going off and cars started to go. “GO GET IT!” he exclaimed. He was so fixated on this hammer that he was oblivious to the fact that traffic was starting to move. I pointed out that cars were moving and said it’s not worth it. His response was an emphatic, “GO GET IT!”. I thought to myself, “Man, this guy really wants that hammer bad!”. Did I mention I was young? At this point in my life I would have just said no, it’s not worth it. But I felt like I had to. I was conditioned from a young age to do what your church leader says no matter what!

So, I did what I was told and got out of the car. By this time, cars were zipping by on both sides going 30-45 mph! The people behind us were impatiently honking their horns at us to go. But Brother J had his mind set on that hammer and wasn’t going to back down! I played frogger and dodged cars as I dashed across two lanes of freeway traffic, grabbed the hammer, waited for a few cars to pass and then dashed back. Brother J was moving forward the second I was in the car. I was puffing and the kids in the back were all wondering what in the world was going on because they only started paying attention partway through the whole debacle. I clicked my seatbelt and being very annoyed that I risked my life so that this guy could have a free hammer, I said, “here’s your hammer!” and tossed it onto the console. Brother J, who is a really good guy, by the way, said in a very genuine way, “it’s not my hammer, it’s yours! You were the one that got out and got it!”. My palm met my face in that moment, but I took it home despite the fact that I was annoyed at the whole thing! I still have that hammer. It has gone through a lot since I’ve owned it! Who knows what stories it has to tell from whoever owned it before and how it ended up on the side of the freeway! It has become my favorite hammer and has served me very well over the years! I guess it was destiny!