Men's Relational Toolbox (Part 2) - The Internal Toolbox

Men are born with an internal toolbox. Internal tools are as important to us men as our toolbox out in the garage.

They are so important that if we woke up one day and didn't have these tools, we'd be lost, just as lost as Robert was when he discovered his toolbox had been stolen.

Just like a man who once lost his tool pouch. The story played out this way.

A female friend of ours had an appointment at the local middle school. She was waiting at the office counter when a man dressed in a suit and tie rushed in. He was breathles, and sweat was dripping off his forehead. In his hand was something large and cumbersome - about the size of a grocery bag. At first our friend couldn't quite make out what it was. 

"Here you go," he said as held it up.

His tone was similar to the one man uses when he's bagged a five-point buck. But our friend could see that this man wasn't carrying a deer. He held in his hands a large tool pouch overflowing with wrenches, drills, pliers, and other assorted tools. Our friend noted that none of dirty, like leftover clutter from a garage sale," she said later.

We know what most of you guys are thinking. Tools? Like leftover clutter from a garage sale? Hardly?

The businessman held up the tool pouch for the women behind the counter to see. "I foud this in front of your school. It was just lying there on the sidewalk," he said incredulously, shaking his head..

The women in the school office glanced from the man to the tool pouch and back again, their faces utterly blank. They were probably thinking what our friend was thinking - that whoever left the pouch had obviously done so on purpose. Maybe it had gotten too heavy to carry another few blocks down the road to the Goodwill truck.

Finally, one of the women stepped forward. "Okay. What should we do with it?" she asked.

Now the blank stare belongd to the man. "These are tools!" he said.

His tone suggested that losing tools might be only slightly less tragic than losing a child, but definitely worse than, say, losing a wedding ring or a thousand dollars cash.

The woman at the counter was not seeing that.

"Well," the other woman said as she peered into the tool pouch, her nose slightly wrinkled, "okay."

Now the man huffed, "Look, I'm late for the biggest appointment of my life, lady. But I had to stop. Somewhere there's a guy missing this tools." He said the word mssing with a level of emotion usually reserved for weddings and funerals. "I couldn't drive another foot without stopping," he said and mentioned back to where his car was parked. "I ran all the way up here."

The woman used her toe to point to a spot on the floor. "Put them there, I guess," she said. "Maybe, someone will claim them."

"Maybe someone will--" the man stopped himself. "Never mind. I'm late for work."

He turned and ran out of the school, hair dishevelled, coat tails flapping in the wind. But he had a heroic look on his face, as if he'd done a deed that him worthy of calling himself a man.

After he left, the woman behind the counter turned to her office coworker and said, "Is it just me, or was that man a little over-the-top about tools?"

The fact is, most of us guys are a little over-the-top about the tools in our toolboxes. It's the same way when it comes to our internal tools.

The good news is we excel at something. In fact, in some settings we're downright amazing. That's because our internal toolbox contains certain tools that make us naturals in those settings.

Let's take a lok at some of the internal tools you probably already have in the next blogs.

(From the Smalley's "Mens Relational Toolbox")