Setting: September 2025 — a Home Depot workshop table, somewhere between paint fumes, pandemonium, and the lumber aisle.
Home Depot runs a kids’ woodworking workshop once a month. In theory, it’s wholesome family fun. In practice, it’s Lord of the Flies with hammers. Holden and I have been regulars long enough to know the drill: I wrestle the wood into something vaguely resembling the sample, and he Jackson-Pollocks the paint on top. Mostly we just try to get through without breaking the project... or losing a finger.
We’re not exactly a well-oiled machine. Usually it’s me risking my life holding nails steady while Holden takes a few enthusiastic whacks. Together we fumble and finagle, somehow ending up with something you can technically call a birdhouse, truck, or plane.
Last weekend's project was a wooden plane, and we were already off to a stellar start. First we lost a nail. Then we put a piece on backwards and had to be rescued by the two senior ladies running the workshop, who — thank God — seemed unfazed by the chaos.
Mid-assembly, disaster struck again. Holden was busy trying to line up one of the microscopic screws with its hole while I attempted, on our third try, to actually screw it in. It slipped right out of his hand and vanished. Cue the Great Screw Search of Aisle 12. First it was me, crawling under the table, realizing I’d reached rock bottom in the lumber aisle. Then Holden dropped down, face inches from the linoleum, scanning like a tiny TSA agent. Finally, the boy working next to us joined the mission. Three strangers, united by a single screw.
Minutes passed. Hope was fading. And then... miracle. The kid shot up from under the table, arm raised high, screw pinched between his fingers like the Holy Grail.
“I found it! I found it!” he shouted.
Holden, completely stone-faced, delivered his verdict: “This is the exact reason you were born.”
The kid blinked. “Maybe to help people,” he offered.
Existential crises usually wait until your thirties. Unless you attend the Home Depot workshop, in which case your life’s purpose shows up with a missing screw.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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