My parents are currently adding a second story to their house, an endeavour which forced them to decamp while a team of workers basically took over the old homestead.

Shortly after they moved in 30-odd years ago, my mother bought this aluminum ladder to use around the house. She has a great sentimental attachment to it now, seeing as how we've had it for so long and have used it during so many meaningful times in our lives (such as "the time we spent the entire summer renovating our grade school campus in a last-ditch effort to save the school from closing after it lost the majority of its funding post-1987 oil market crash, and then it closed the following year anyway, bastards"). So when the workmen first started poking around the house, my mother warned them not to abscond with her ladder, afraid that they might somehow mix it up with their own equipment.

"Not to worry," the head contractor assured her. "We won't use your ladder. We call that type 'the widowmaker.'"