Chapter 1
The Layman (Layman’s View) | March 15, 2026
It wasn’t so much that screws were needed everywhere... as it was that whenever I actually needed one, the right size was nowhere to be found. I didn’t need many of the same kind, but having a variety of sizes was always a good thing.
Screws had a way of vanishing when I looked for them, only to catch my eye when I wasn’t thinking at all. They were in school hallways, on windowsills, sometimes on the pavement, or tucked under the stones at the edge of a flowerbed. Screws that didn’t need to be there; screws that, if left there, would eventually rust away into utter uselessness.
Those screws found a home in my desk drawer, nestled beside pencils I rarely touched because they were too dark or too light, fountain pens with dried-up ink, and unsharpened colored pencils. The screws I gathered would roll around in that space, and without me realizing it, they would scratch the pencils and the pens. Since it happened when I wasn’t looking, I can’t be certain—but the suspicion is heavy. If not a screw, who or what else could have done it?
The screws I collected to find a purpose for never actually found their place; when the time finally came for them to be useful, they were always replaced by brand-new ones. They remained in a state of being long forgotten, occupying a space that wasn’t exactly someone else’s, but wasn’t their own either.
These days, I pick up screws for a different reason. You’ll often find them on the floor of parking lots. It might be hard to believe, but it’s true. I pick them up, marveling at how they managed to stay there without clinging to someone’s tire. How lucky, I think, that all the cars passing through here managed to avoid this one. Yet, it’s a screw that could pierce a tire at any moment. So, I pick up every one I see. Just to make sure they don’t end up lodged where they don’t belong.
I quietly slip these rescued screws into a toolbox. Whoever owns the toolbox will surely find a use or a proper place for them. Whether as a child or now as an adult, I still cannot simply pass a screw by. I am still a layman—at least when it comes to those screws.
The same goes for my writing tools—the pencils, colored pencils, and fountain pens—that I keep collecting for some other reason, unable to throw them away. If there is one thing that has changed, it’s that I no longer keep the screws and pencils together.
Being a layman doesn’t mean I know nothing at all.
