Not to brag, but I got a rechargeable flashlight. It has a few settings and can stand on its own. In other words, I got this cheap thing. Yet when I packed for an overnight stay at a hotel, I was bummed I couldn’t find it.  I did grab a different little light, but it wasn’t my yellow one.

I was so relieved when I found it when I got home.

And this strikes me that stuff like this is important to men. I’ve had it for a while. I’ve found it handy. And for some reason I am attached to it.  Which is a little weird because I do not need it that often.  Phones have lights on them after all.

If I am with my parents and we need a light, my dad pulls out this one about the size of a pen. He keeps it on him, and he is proud of that little light. As I am proud of mine.

I think we want our flashlight and not another one (at home my wife likes little flashlights in places in case we need them).

My brother in law was a police officer and he has a brand he likes. I remember him having a brand he was discussing with his son. A flashlight is very important for a police officer, but I wonder if the female police officers have a position on flashlights.

Men get attached to things.  We find something we like and that is what we want to use. We don’t want a new one, but the one we are familiar with.

It reminds me of how attached the men in my family were to our tractors on the farm. The four tractors we had (even the one that didn’t run anymore) had nicknames and we saw that they had personalities.

Its been thirty years since we sold them at an auction and we still think about them.

Somehow our tools are part of our identity and thus they are important to us. We like to get new tools, but we keep our old ones as well.

This blog post began as a desire to write a poem about my flashlight. But I am not sure how to make it into a meaningful poem. Perhaps I am a little hesitant about writing that poem because I am afraid of what I might discover.

Perhaps so much depends on us men (more depend on women), but we have trouble not being vulnerable.  Our objects help us to not feel alone. That we can depend on our flashlights (etc.) and not have to let our guard down. Because these tools won’t be disappointed in us.

Our perhaps men are just simple beings. But I don’t think so.