Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/sPxoeN3MEt4
or read his story below…
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Life, actually…
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TO DRIVE A NAIL
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Jimmy Three is a good dawdler.
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After all, at age five, lacking the vaguely envisioned future burdens of adulthood, Jimmy Three has a great deal of dawdling time.
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This morning’s first dawdle is all about nails and hammers and claws and ouchies.
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At the end of the front yard sidewalk, where concrete gutter meets grainy asphalt, Jimmy Three bends to pick up a sheeny metal object. A bent-thus-discarded nail that glints in the sunlight. He rotates the nail between thumb and forefinger, holds it close to the eye, examines it at arm’s length, wonders how it got where it wound up.
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What to do with a bent nail on a dewy morning. It’s not like Jimmy Three to throw anything away. Mimicking his mother’s habits, he pockets the nail that will later join other possibly useful discarded objects into an old Hav-A-Tampa cigar box gifted by his grandfather.
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Oh the treasures within that box. But that will be the subject of a future story.
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Right now, Jimmy Three races into his home, digs under the bunk bed, retrieves a small green metal toolbox, squeaks it open, finds a couple of unbent nails and a tiny hammer. He is inspired to do something useful with hammer and nails, something no-one else will find significant.
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He occupies himself attempting to drive a nail into a scrapped two-by-four. Grasping the wooden handle up near the weighty iron top, he timidly taps the flanged head and gets little result. Swinging the hammer higher so that gravity and sinew can bring it down harder, he manages to bend the nail. It flies off and hides beneath the bunk.
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Jimmy is not frustrated, because he has other nails. But he is also aware that calmly assessing the situation will go a long way toward saving future nails. His father once showed him the proper way to get the most out of a hammer. He finally recalls this: Grasp the handle much lower, away from the claw, thus increasing the power of the downward swing.
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He holds the nail so that it is vertical while the pointed tip is touching the wood. With the confidence of youth and the help of gravity and the assistance of young muscle, Jimmy Three joyfully brings full force to the nail head.
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No reason to explain that Jimmy’s thumb ouchy takes a few minutes out of his project. But he knows that to complain is to risk having unwanted drama and perhaps hammer-banning.
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The next time is magic. Using all his hastily garnered wisdom, the nail is pounded neatly into the two-by-four. For a second he considers creating an exhibit of wood and nail to show off his prowess to playmates. The pounding in his sore thumb reminds him to calm down.
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The world is relieved when J3 abandons the project and runs away to the butterfly tree to see who has shown up this morning.
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There is so much to do during dawdling time
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© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed