Martyria (mar-tir’-i-a): Confirming something by referring to one’s own experience.
You want to know what this is all about? Ha! You came to the right place buddy. I’ve been using a screwdriver since I was 16. I started working at “Sal’s Auto Repair” when I was still in high school. That was forty years ago. You may have noticed it’s named “Big John’s Auto Repair” now—after me, the proud owner and proprietor.
I love the smell of lithium grease in the morning. Holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a grease gun in the other, lubing a ball joint, is one of my favorite things—it’s like inoculating the ball joint with some kind of vaccine to keep it lively and lithe, sucking up the turns and bumps like nobody’s business—rejuvenating it—like slopping a dollop of RediMove on your knee or shoulder!
Anyway, getting under the lift with a car posed above is like being some kind of voyeur. I’m not ashamed to say it gives me a thrill to look up from underneath at a chassis—the tailpipe, the gas tank, the drive shaft, the brake lines, the transmission, the brakes, the coil springs all give me a thrill. I like going under the hood too.
Everything’s right there. The engine! My God. A massive machine, running on explosions, rotating a crankshaft and propelling the entire car wherever you want it to go, producing swirling exhaust fumes and making the exhaust pipe growl like an angry bear.
I wield my screwdrivers all over a car—one for slotted screws (“regular” screws) and phillips head screws—screws with star-shaped slots in their heads. I grip the screwdriver by its handle, stick its tip in the slot and twist—one direction to screw the screw in, and the opposite direction to unscrew it. Sometimes the screw is rusted in. In that case, I spray the screw with WD-40, a rust-busting solvent that smells almost as good as grease does!
Today, I’m taking the license plates off a car for my friend Ralphy. When he dropped it off he said “Where else can you get a new Caddy for five grand?” I didn’t ask him where he got it. It’s none of my business.
I’ll be using my standard screwdriver to do the job. There’s no rust so it ought to go pretty easy. I’m replacing the Cadillac’s plates with the plates from Ralphy’’s mother’s car. It might be illegal, but I’m just screwing the screws, four out, four in—out and in, the “ways” of the screwdriver.
The screwdriver is a tool with one specific intended use—screwing. But, screwdrivers offer an invitation to misuse, like everything else that people use.
Some people misuse screwdrivers by using them as chisels! But the worst: using a phillips head screwdriver to stab somebody! Its pointed dagger-like tip readily penetrates skin, making a wound capable of murder. I am opposed to this.
So, despite its occasional misuse, the screwdriver is one of my favorite tools in my toolbox. With a twist of the wrist, it binds things together and takes them apart. They were first used in the fifteenth-century for armor maintenance. The phillips head was invented in the early 1930s.
Well, there you have it. Here, take my screwdriver and give it a try.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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