Example, filled in with our words
One Washer
On the morning of Father's Day, the kitchen faucet began to drip. Dad looked at it the way other people look at a wrapped present.
"One washer," he said. "Ten minutes."
Charlie rode along to the hardware store in Hickory Ridge. It has thirty-one aisles, and a young man in an apron stands by the door.
"Can I help you find something?" said the young man.
"No, thank you," said Dad. "I know RIGHT where it is."
He did not. He turned LEFT at the paint. He turned LEFT at the garden hoses, which brought him back to the paint.
"We could ask," said Charlie.
"We are not lost," said Dad. "We are looking."
They looked at ladders. They looked at forty kinds of doorknob. In aisle nineteen Dad stopped to explain a drill to a stranger, who listened politely, because he worked there.
"Plumbing is back the way you came," said the stranger, "and to the RIGHT."
"I have it from here," said Dad, and went LEFT.
An hour later the cart held a flashlight, a bag of birdseed and a tape measure, his seventh. It did not hold a washer.
At the register Charlie set a very small packet on the counter. Washers. Aisle two. They had walked past it on the way in, and Charlie had asked the young man in the apron, quietly, somewhere around the doorknobs.
Dad looked at the packet for a while.
"Aisle two," he said. "RIGHT where I was headed."
The faucet took ten minutes, as promised. There was one washer LEFT in the packet, and Dad put it in the kitchen drawer for next time, where nobody will ever find it again.
Happy Father's Day. Whatever you are holding now is yours to keep.