Follow that truck!

Does anyone else here get the automatic inborn reaction, any time they see a Snap-On truck, to chase it down until it stops? I get an instinctive reaction like a german shepherd seeing a bicycle whizzing past.

Then again, I know where I get that - if we weren't going anywhere critical, my father would perk up, instantly on quivering alert, and say "Ooh! Snap-On!" And we'd get to go see the toybox on wheels! (That's got to be one of the few professions where situational awareness that you're being followed registers as a good thing.)

My mother was a good sport, all told, as she'd give in with a sigh and mutter, "It's still less expensive that an emergency room bill from using a cheap tool." And then she'd direct a meaningful stare at my father's right hand.

I was so happy, the day I got my first snap-on tool that I bought with my own money - it was a scribe, and expensive as it was at the time, I didn't care. The day before, I'd proved the value of eye protection when the cheap sears tool had snapped and half came flying back at my face. I still wince at their prices, but I'm slowly building a small set of things that save my hands, wrists, and eyes.

Since moving to the Lower 48, I'm no longer working at a place that gets weekly visits. But every time I work 25 minutes late, on the commute home, I fall about half a block behind a snap-on truck. And it is so very, very hard not to follow him until he stops and lets me buy some wrenches, or...

One of these days I'm going to chase him down, and my husband will probably worry that I'm home late for dinner, even when I come in triumphantly holding a torque wrench like it's the key to the city.