Thank You for Toys and Tools

What is the difference between a tool and a toy?

I use a lot of my toys as tools and some of my tools as toys.

Art supplies look like toys but they are really tools.

I consider my camera, my computer, musical instruments, and Jeep Cherokee to be tools but some folks call them toys. 

Many children’s toys are actually tools for learning.

There are body parts that look like tools, but they can be toys. (unless you are Catholic)

Some cooking tools are great toys. Ask any parent who has had to retrieve pots, pans, and silverware from the back yard after a mud pie fest.

Some tools are associated with gender—which frustrates me since I have  been a contractor. I have never seen an advertisement for a power saw as a perfect gift for “the little lady” on Mothers day. That ain’t right.

Yesterday I went shopping for a new chess set, a perfect tool-toy for the mind. 

Every store I went to referred me to the Men’s gift section. 

While I was snooping around in the men’s gift section, I saw a whole lot of toys that I would consider to be perfect tools for me— car chargers for electronics, desk organizers, groovy battery operated flashlights, and all manner of quality hand made leather goods.

The women’s section boasted stinky flower lotions, fake jewelry, and  some other superflua which could never aid a woman in building  a tree fort or exercising her mental faculties. Again, that ain’t right.

I did find a chess set in the toy section at one department store but it was one of those cheap plastic things where you can’t tell the Bishop from the Pawn. (What a great social statement, eh?)

I left the dream of finding the perfect chess set, the ideal tool for mind expansion and strategic philosophy, in the toy section and went home to play with my other tools.

I also wondered what Debbie Reynolds would do if she only had the right tool:

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~ by leakelley on January 25, 2009.