As I was walking down the street the other day, I noticed a man working on his house. I could see from the street that he seemed to be in distress and having a lot of trouble. As I came closer, I saw that he was nailing siding onto his house -- and that he was driving the nails with his forehead! He was in a lot of pain and I felt a great deal of sympathy for him. I thought, "Here is an opportunity to make someone very happy by showing him a better way to do things." Making this poor, confused man happy would make me happy too. So I said, "Excuse me sir, there is a better way to do that."
He stopped pounding his head on the nail that was currently protruding from the side of his house, wiped the blood from his eyes so that he might see me, and said, "What?" "I said that there is a better way to pound that nail. You can use a hammer." He said, "What?" I said, "A hammer. It's a tool. It was designed specifically for driving nails and other similar work. It's much faster, and it doesn't hurt when you use it."
"A hammer, huh?" "That's right. If you get one, I would be glad to show you how to use it. You will be amazed at how easy it is to learn and how much easier it will make your job." Somewhat bewildered, he said, "I think I have seen hammers, but I just thought they were toys for kids." I pressed on, "Well, I suppose kids could use hammers under proper supervision, but I think what you saw were brightly colored plastic hammers. They look a bit like real hammers, but are much cheaper and don't really do anything but amuse children."
"Oh," he said. Then went on, "But a hammer would be so much more expensive than using my forehead. I don't want to spend the money for a hammer." Now somewhat frustrated I said, "But in the long run, the hammer would pay for itself because you would spend more time pounding nails and less time treating head wounds."
"Oh," he said. "But I can't do as much with a hammer as I can with my forehead," he said with a great deal of conviction." Exasperated, I went on. "Well I'm not quite sure what you have been using your forehead for, but hammers are marvelously useful tools. You can pound nails, pull nails, pry apart boards... In fact, every day people just like you seem to be finding new ways to use hammers. Even without knowing how proficient you are at using your forehead, I'm sure that a hammer would do all of these things better."
"But why should I start using a hammer? All of my friends pound nails with their foreheads too. If there were a better way to do it, I'm sure that one of them would have told me," he countered. Now he had caught me off guard. "Perhaps they are all thinking the same thing," I suggested. "You could be the first among your friends to discover this new way to do things," I said with enthusiasm. With a skeptical look in his bloodstained eye he said, "Look, some of my friends are professional carpenters. You can't tell me they don't know the best way to pound nails!" I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh, "Well, even professionals become set in their ways and resist change." Then with a frustrated yell I continued, "I mean come on! You can't just stand there, bleeding profusely, and try to convince me that using your forehead to pound nails is better than using a hammer!"
Now quite angry, he yelled back, "Hey listen buddy, I've been pounding nails with my forehead for many years now and it's second nature to me. Besides all of my friends do it this way and the only people that I've seen using 'hammers' were little kids. So take your stupid little children's toys and get the hell off my property."
Stunned, I stepped back. I nearly tripped over a large box of head bandages. I noticed the all too familiar GigaHard logo. I had seen all that I needed to see. This man had been brainwashed, probably by the expensive bandage company, and was beyond help. "Hell, let him bleed," I thought.
I walked along, happy that I owned not one, but two hammers at home. I use them every day at work and I love them. A sharp pain hit me in my gut as I recalled the days before I used hammers. I used to drive nails with the palm of my hand, then later I also used my forehead, and later still various rocks. I knew first hand what pain that man working on his house was going through. Maybe he thought that I had been brainwashed by the hammer manufacturer just as I thought he had been by the bandage maker. Who knows. I consoled myself with the thought that tonight was the hammer users club meeting and that I could talk to all of my friends about their hammers. We will make jokes about all the people we know that don't use hammers and try to figure out the new forehead bandage that is so popular with them now. You put it on over your forehead before you start driving nails so that you don't get so much blood on the wood, but it slips off all of the time and still doesn't let you forget that it's your forehead under there. We will discuss whether we should spend our money buying the fancy new hammers that just came out, or wait till the cheap, powerful nail guns come out next year. So much new innovation in the hammer world, as always.
Then when I get home, like every night, I will sit up and build something or other using one of my hammers till very late when I finally fall asleep. In the morning I will wake up ready to go out into the world proclaiming to all non-hammer users how they too could become a happy hammer user like me.
