I took Christmas stuff from the garage to decorate my office. To make room, I moved office stuff to the garage.  

Last week, I undecorated and found that there is not enough room in my office for the stuff that used to be there and there’s no longer enough room in the garage to put the Christmas stuff back where it came from.  

I took a Logic class in college, so I know this is not possible. I also taught math. If you have equal amounts and you subtract one from the other, you will not have a remainder. Add the difference to the subtrahend and you will have what you started with. You can trust me, because I know what a subtrahend is. 

Yet here I stand in the driveway with half an artificial Christmas tree and an extra storage bin full of books. Obviously, there are “life skills” that are not taught in college, like maybe “Organization, an Introduction to Applied Common Sense.” 

Pappaw didn’t go to college, but he could have taught that course. He had a shed out behind his house that contained one of justabout everything on this planet that could be used for work. There were vises, pipe threaders, miter saws, twister things and bender things, and about a billion boxes of nails, screws, bolts, washers, flanges, hasps, hinges, clamps and a bunch of gizmos that looked like metal insects. 

If you asked him for a counter-threaded Himmelfinger three-sevenths hex, he could walk right to the correct box and fetch one.Even more amazing is that if the box was empty, he knew there was no counter-threaded Himmelfinger hex in the shed.  

I have no confidence that I would be able to go into my garage and locate the lawn mower. I once bought a hedge trimmer, went to hang it on a hook and found, of all things, a hedge trimmer already there. 

Pappaw had no formal education. He could make out some words in print but couldn’t really read. I sometimes tutor students who are taking the SAT and am currently reading a 224-page history of esoteric punctuation, Dr. Cecelia Watson’s “Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark.”  

When I am finished, I will know more about the semi-colon than I will ever be able to apply to any situation I will ever find myself in, and I still won’t be able to take care of my own pool or keep my grass alive.  

I call it “situational IQ.” Jeopardy! contestants can casually identify obscure operas, know that the Orinoco is the fourth largest river by discharge in South America, and can tell the difference between Manet and Monet. Then they don’t know that the University of Alabama is called the Crimson Tide and are unaware that the Army rank above captain is major.  

It’s like we all have little sheds in our heads with boxes we fill with whatever we think will come in handy. Might be know-how, might be punctuation, could be opera. There are all sorts of smarts, so why do we only officially recognize the college kind and hold it in such high esteem?  

Beats me. Maybe somebody is studying that in college right now. 

Meanwhile, let’s say you need a torx-headed carriage toggle. Who you gonna call? Probably not Dr. Cecelia Watson, certainly not me. Unfortunately, Pappaw is no longer around, and they aren’t making them like him anymore.  

On the other hand, if you need a hedge trimmer, half a Christmas tree, or some consultation about a semi-colon, I’m your man.