The Sledgehammer: How It Works
By Steve Martin
 

Many of today's adults, who are otherwise capable of handling sophisticated modern devices, are united by a contemporary malady: sledgehammer anxiety. "I feel I'm going to break it," "The old ways still work for me," "This is where technology leaves me behind" are the most common chants of the sledgehammer-phobe. Much of the initial fear comes from a failure to understand just how it works. By attaching a "heavy-weighted slug" (one of the many terms for the blob of lead at the sledgehammer's terminus) to a truncated super-cissoid, you create a disproportionate fulcrum. In other words, if you're a TV set showing Regis promoting a diet book, and you're in a room with an angry unpublished poet holding a sledgehammer, watch out.

The novice sledgehammerer (from the German Sledgehammerammalamadingdong) must be familiar with a few terms:

Thunk: This is the sound that the "clanker" (street term for the heavy-weighted slug) makes when wielded against the "stuff" (see next).

Stuff: Things that are to be wanged (see next).

Wang: the impact of the clanker and the stuff.

Smithereens: The result of being wanged.

Many people are surprised to find out that the sledgehammer has only one moving part: it. Yet "Should I buy now or wait for the new models?" is a refrain so often heard from the panicky first-timer, who forgets that the number of sledgehammer innovations in the last three thousand years can be counted on one finger. There are currently two types of sledgehammers on the market: the three-foot stick with a lead weight on the end, called the "normal," and a new model, currently being beta-tested, which is a three-foot stick with a lead weight in the middle and is called the "below normal." But don't let the market confusion keep you from getting your feet wet. The longer you wait, the fewer things you'll demolish.

There is a natural fear of sledgehammers, says the National Sledgehammer and Broken Toe Society, which is charting the most common accidents and offers tips for the sledgehammer's safe use. The over-the-head position, for example, often leads to excruciating lower-body pain, caused when the sledgehammer wedges itself between the thighs at the end of the backswing. There is also the self-inflicted back-of-the-head knockout on lateral swings, which is very rare, and afflicts only - to use the researcher's lingo - "really dumb people." There are also cleaning accidents. A home hobbyist in Valdosta, Georgia, reported that while he was removing paint from his sledgehammer it suddenly went out of control and destroyed his living-room wall, even though he never let go of its handle.

Despite all these drawbacks, the world of the sledgehammer is rife with enthusiasts: "I find the sledgehammer very erotic," says Jane Parpardello, who is a stockbroker with Smith Barney and wants everyone to know that her home phone number is listed. "I think it's because my father was shaped like a sledgehammer: the long, wooden body, the big metal head. When I see a man with that shape, I want to pick him up and swing him against an apartment wall."

The sledgehammer king, Marty Delafangio, whose net worth is estimated a forty-two thousand dollars, was recently summoned before Congress to defend his reasons for attaching a mandatory Web browser to his market-leading product. "I smelled money to be made," said Delafangio. "The combination of a Web browser and a sledgehammer is a natural." Congress disagreed, and now the Web browser can be sold only as an optional addition, although in a compromise the powder-puff attachment remains.

In the last ten years, the sledgehammer has come into its own, finally recognized for what it is: a tool, a thing, and a heavy object. A hundred years from now, when technology has altered the sledgehammer's appearance to a sleek, digital, aerodynamic machine, it will no doubt function as it does today, toppling the mighty and denting the hard.


* From The New Yorker, July 27, 1998.