Up until leaving school for what might of been Spring Break, were it not 16° F when I left, I kept my dorm roomkey attached to a pouch for my neato $8-Tractor Supply Co multitool. It was durable, it folds up small, it had an LED and it bends at enough places that the screwdriver could fit into most tiny spaces or reach about 8". The little pouch was falling apart, though. Basically all the fabric had worn off, the velcro that kept it closed was gone, the label was missing, as was the top. I had the change where I attached the keyring about a half-dozen times because it kept getting ripped off.
My mother says it’s ignorant and disrespectful of her for her son to be seen carrying around a “ratty, disgusting little thing” like the mostly-dead pouch. My solution to this has always been to just keep it deep inside my pocket around her, and take out the tool when I need either- I can keep the whole pouch closed in my fist if it’s empty. But, I dropped it on my dresser at home, rather than keeping it in my bag, because I like to have the tool somewhere I can get to it easily. So, while I’m visiting a friend, she decides it would be nice to replace it with a fashionable thing shaped like a fanny pack, but about the size of my hand. It has nowhere to attach a keyring, so she just drops it and the old multitool inside the new pouch. She thinks I’m keeping the old one around just to spite her, so she replaces the roomkey with a house key (about the same size and color) and shoves a few quarters inside the pouch so I don’t suspect anything until it’s too late. She doesn’t tell anyone so that I don’t change it back, and takes it in with her to work the next day.
My step-father, Denny, also thinks I should replace the pouch, and he has an old multitool he’s not using, so he moves the housekey onto his old one and puts it right next to my empty pouch. He figures I have the tool on me, since I do half the time, and thinks nothing of it being almost empty. He tells no-one until we’re on the road the next day, out to visit my sister Sam.
Sam, who doesn’t personally care much but lives near a BassPro shop, buys me this obscenely fancy new multitool which can just barely fit into my pocket, and has everything you could want except the LED. It’s obviously a fancy, expensive tool, so I tell her about Denny’s pouch, thank her, but say she should take it back. She’s a little insulted, but can understand my point of view and doesn’t mind getting $60 back. Mom is thoroughly insulted that we’re all trying to ruin her attempts to be nice (which she just now tells us about) and a screaming match begins between her and Sam about who’s being worse to whom. Denny steps out after about five minutes, I give up on trying to get a word in edgewise after about ten, and Sam finally decides that it’s just not worth it, gives up and starts to plan dinner after about an hour. This starts a shorter fight, which I won. The end result- I have to keep all three tools, all four pouches, and use mom’s pouch whenever I’m at home.
Relatively relaxing two days, everyone gets sick of eachother and we have two days of hell, I get back and immediately go down to visit the other folk whose Spring Breaks are just now starting. We all forgot most of the above fight, because we’re a mediterranian family and fights like that are common enough that nobody thinks twice about them. Thus I shoved dad’s pouch into my pocket, Sam’s & the original into my bag. Mom’s, the one with my actual roomkey on it, is still in her desk at work, but she never mentioned this part. Denny’s has the above mentioned housekey on it, which I’m convinced is my roomkey.
We figure all this out while I’m unloading the truck.
I lose out the least, since I have a few useless multitools, now, though none with a mini flashlight on them. Luckily, the university shuffled me around so much when I was trying to get a replacement key that no-one remembered to charge me for the new key.
I guess I really have no excuse to say “fuck,” since everyone involved was either trying to help me out or forgot to do me harm, but it is the pit. Pretend I went off on a tangent about The Little Shit, a perfect example of what’s wrong with humanity, and seeing it at a party. Whatever vulgarities you need to imagine, it deserves them.