A Fool for Tools.(personal narratives of Carol Moseley Braun )(Brief article)(Column)

Byline: Cory Farley

Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois used to talk about the worst fight her parents ever had.

"The toilet broke, and there was water going everywhere,'' she said. "My mother sent my father to the hardware store, and he came back with a new lawn mower.''

Audiences laughed at that as though it weren't entirely understandable that a man sent for a flapper valve would come home with a mower, if not a miter box and an angle grinder. Fixing a toilet doesn't take forever, and what's he supposed to do until his new lathe is delivered?

Conventional wisdom holds that women are the shoppers and men pay the bills. Not at my house. My wife doesn't care if she never sees another Macy's. She's still wearing clothes she had in college. (I'm lucky on two counts: She doesn't mind, and they still fit.)

My approach is more along the lines of "I've never actually used that bending brake, but it's been in the drawer for six months, and this one's on sale.''

This idiosyncrasy apparently is without either logical or chronological limits. I know for a certainty that I'll never again change the oil on a ...