I've got a fever, and the only medicine is more spools

I’ve always had a latent nerdy obsession with those big wooden spools. But I thought this latent nerdy obsession would always be admiration from afar – I never thought I’d be the kind of person who actually laid hands on one of the magnificent beasts. You know the ones: two big, wooden circles connected in the middle and used to transport large distances of cable and wiring to construction sites. Well, this week, my latent nerdy obsession got a chance at its 15 minutes of fame.

Kristine and I were waiting for the T when we saw a guy awkwardly wheeling this huge wooden spool (at least 5 feet in diameter) down Huntington Avenue away from Harvard Medical School.

“Kristine,” I said, pointing. “Spool!"

She didn’t want to miss the T, but she could see the disappointed nerd shame spiral looming were I to miss what could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So she didn't protest as I risked missing the next trolley and chased the man with the spool down.

He said that the spools just get thrown away (a waste of materials, no?), and when I asked him for the thing, not only did he give it to me, but he thanked me effusively for taking it. This thank-you, as it turns out, was not without cause. He was awkwardly wheeling the spool because great big spools are very awkward to wheel.

I maneuvered the spool back down the sidewalk, across treacherous traffic, treacherous trolley tracks, and more treacherous traffic, over some snow banks, down the alley, and into the back yard.

On the way, a like-minded man waiting for the bus said, “Whoa! Where did you get that?”

I shrugged and said, “Some dude.”

And he said, “That’s gonna be a great table.”

“Yes it is,” I said. “Yes it is.”

Though she was skeptical at first, Kristine caught the spool fever. Either she found my enthusiasm about it so infectious that she couldn’t resist, or she just saw the light, plain and simple. Either way, she’s on board. She wants to find smaller, subsidiary spools that will be like this mighty spool’s moons (or like the chairs to the big spool’s outdoor dining table, more likely).


We’re going to weather-seal it.