The 9.6-Volt Cordless Ryobi ZRHP496K

Some 40,000 years ago, a volcano erupts in southern Italy, sending a blanket of ash as far as Moscow. Along the way it dusts the people of Kostenki village and all their effects, including bones, shells and teeth pierced by hand-spun drill. In Neolithic Pakistan, a hand drill made of green jasper bores into the astonishing hues of lapis lazuli. A little later, in pre-Roman Egypt, scholars abbreviate the bow drill to three lines, creating the determinative hieroglyph for all words related to carpentry and crafts.

Leap past the Iron Age, over the Middle Ages, to the early industrial United States. A farmer in Goshen, Pennsylvania pries open a crate containing the township’s first hand-crank drill press, ordered through a catalog and shipped to his barn door. He can now put holes in steel and cast iron within ear-shot of the supper bell. In another hemisphere, two Australians are first to slap an electric motor on a drill. Before long, a German takes it portable, and Black & Decker makes it look like a gun.

The 9.6-Volt Cordless Ryobi ZRHP496K is the Y2K dorm room incarnation of man’s indispensable friend. Spindle, Augur, Gimlet, Brace and Bit: the drill has been exploited for centuries under more memorable names, and found several classic forms. The plastic hard-case and rubber overmold may mask its elegant pedigree, but beneath the 24 position clutch, variable speed trigger and built-in level, the Ryobi is faithful to its essence.

My Ryobi traveled 3,000 miles in the trunk of a 1998 Honda Accord to find me. My little brother unloaded the surprise five months ago, just in time for me to install two curtain rods, four shelves and a wall-mounted desk in my new apartment, in a new city, at the start of a new school year. It was then–my belongings in piles on the laminate wood–that I discovered the drill’s unadvertised utility: catharsis.

The rechargeable battery and trigger switch of a cordless drill are refinements we now take for granted, obscuring its critical function: to grip and rotate a cutting tip, while applied force presses it into otherwise unyielding material. Likewise, a cathartic experience pierces our grief, and drains the excessive heartache. The sting yields ecstatic relief.

I took clean screws from their 8 and 12 count packages and pressed them into the wall with only momentary resistance. Kneeling on my unmopped floor, I felt that I was young and I would do the things I said I’d do. My lingering anxiety was a weightless, white dust escaping the walls.