Despite what the anthropologists say, I’m pretty sure women, not men, invented tools. That doesn’t mean they used them first. I think cave women drew pictures of tools in the sand and then said to their husbands, "Make one of these things and go rake the lawn."

The problem with tools, of course, is that, once invented and manufactured, they wholly remove one’s excuse for being unable to perform specialized tasks. We have at least three rakes, for example, all purchased by my wife for the purpose of raking leaves. Since it is again fall, in my wife’s mind, the time for raking has come.

Men, however, know better. Raking is best accomplished, I explain each year, when all the leaves have fallen. To even consider removing the rake from the garden shed while a single leaf still waves overhead seems to me, a tragic waste of energy.

We only have one tree, but it is painfully fertile. Every fall it drops enough orange and yellow leaves to fill 18 of those huge paper leaf bags. The last time I checked there were no more than four, maybe five bags worth in our little back yard and a dozen bags full still over head. And rakes, as I explain to my wife, are primitive tools requiring too many expended calories of effort per leaf collected.

But women are clever. My wife drew a picture of an electric leaf blower in the sand outside our cave and I fell for the idea. It was even a little bit fun whooshing all those leaves around the yard and into a pile using blasts of man-made wind. It takes a highly evolved creature to wield a leaf blower skillfully. There were, as I predicted, just four bags of leaves in the pile.

Then came that torrential blast of midnight rain and heavy gusts. The very next morning there were more leaves than before. Eight, maybe even ten bags full plastered the entire back yard with a golden wet carpet. By morning all my leaf blowing had gone to waste.

My wife, being clever, pointed to the four giant bags already filled and implied that I had still made progress. She reminded me, tactfully, that last year at least a dozen leaves had managed to cling to their mother tree through almost the entire winter. She noted, artfully, that the combined height of the snow on top of the full harvest of leaves had made it difficult to see out the downstairs windows until the first warm week of Spring.

She is right. I don’t want to make another mistake. Last year my timing was off.

So I am weighing her words carefully against the volume of unfallen leaves. Next I must check the Farmer’s Almanac to predict exactly how much snow is expected this winter and when. That data must be factored into the effort required to fill those 14 remaining bags with the utmost efficiency. My eyes are constantly on the tree. My mind is forever measuring. My body is alert, coiled and ready.

The lazy husband, like the finest Swiss watch, wastes no motion in his quest for perfection. -- JDR