One day I visited her to see how she did it. She threw a couple of new pieces, and then unwrapped a large platter she had thrown before. She said it was "leather hard" and ready to trim. From her many tools she pulled out a "shureform." This is a piece of metal with sharp teeth, sort of like a cheese grater, held by a handle. She used this on the leather hard platter to take partly-dry clay off the bottom of the platter efficiently.

I asked her where she got such a wide variety of tools. She told me that many are available in art supply stores, but that she got the shureform from a hardware store about two years ago. Then she told me about going to buy it. She went into the hardware store and asked where she would find a shureform. The older man hel

The young man checking her out picked up the shureform and asked, "What are you going to do with this?" My aunt explained that she was going to use it to trim pottery pieces. The woman said, "Oh that's interesting! I didn't know it could be used for that."

"It doesn't really matter what I'm going to use it for," she said. "I just want to buy a shureform."

The man said, "What are you going to do with that, young lady?" Since my aunt was about 50 at the time, she knew the man was trying to be charming, so she smiled and said that she would actually be using it as a pottery tool.

"Never mind," she said. "I'll look around and find it myself."

My aunt was of the opinion that the older man had his gender identity and views about sexuality tied up in tools and saw tools as a "man's domain." The next time my aunt went to a hardware store, she went to a major chain, a Lowe's, and looked at the customers. There were more women than men in the store

Some common words found in the essay are:
Aunt Jeannine, Tim Allen, hardware store, sell pottery tools, don't sell pottery, pottery tools, leather hard, sell pottery, don't sell, pottery tool,
Approximate Word count = 641
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)