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As you may or may not be aware, ladies and gentlemen, our participation in the human experience is salted, peppered, seasoned, and otherwise littered with fleeting and intermittent moments where we lack grace and exude idiocy.
Granted, it’s the frequency, quantity, and quality of those events we experience that help us to cull the herd and keep the single helix pond scum from having too much of a negative impact on our gene pool.
Just the other day, on a lazy Sunday afternoon in the hours leading up to the return of Game of Thrones for its final season, I had such and experience when I got the wild hair to mow the lawn.
Just over 24 hours before that, I had made a quixotic attempt to do the lawn, only to be relegated by bad weather to other pursuits. I got the hedges trimmed and did the edging as the volume of the thunder exceeded the volume of the noise being pumped into my wax generation chambers by artists who have achieved high rankings in my catalogue of tunes. Before I could dig out the lawn mower and cut the grass, the rain came down.
It didn’t last very long, however the rest of my day was consumed by other endeavors, and I didn’t seize the opportunity to give the lawn any more attention.
Imagine my surprise when the wild hair presented itself that I actually exert physical effort on a Sunday afternoon, of all days. Rest assured that’s……
Let’s just say that I reserve Sundays for the process of ‘rest assured’.
And so, my friends, I donned my ‘working in the yard’ threads and set out to insure my lawn wasn’t the only one on the block that desperately needed attention.
For what it’s worth, my ‘working in the yard’ dress code is quite similar to my ‘walking the dog’ dress code. Try to get past the dog’s cognitive dissonance on that one isn’t really an exercise one should consider engaging.
None the less, I mowed the lawn.
I mowed the front yard and then the two sides.
I then moved to the backyard, which in recent weeks had taken on an air of what I could only characterize as a sanctuary for all things slithery.
Of course I haven’t seen a snake out there since the 2007 massacre when my beloved wife used a shovel to completely butcher what very well could have been an animated battery cable from a 1972 Plymouth Volare. Even still, the dog has started to complain that she doesn’t particularly appreciate how the tall grass tickles her nether regions whenever she defiles the sanctuary with her Play-Doh Fun Factory.
Mowing the backyard isn’t as enjoyable as doing the front. There’s a tree and an dog house out there, the latter of which is unappreciated by the soul for whom it was constructed. We also have Wifey’s planter (the dog calls it the slop trough) that Dad and I assembled a few years ago. There’s also shrubbery around the perimeter of the fence which has to be negotiated. I meant to cut that stuff down last month before the foliage arrived, but I’m thinking I had that idea on a Sunday when I was practicing ‘rest assured’.
Don’t forget the presence of the barbeque, the saw horses, or the rocking chair.
It was all of the elements of that blasted obstacle course in which my occasional lack of grace became glorious.
With the noise from my tunes pumping in my ears offering rhythms and melodies to the growl of my Briggs & Stratton 6.5 HP mower with a 21″ blade, I negotiated the would-be snake farm, the disembodied branches, the slow drip irrigation system, and the colonic output of a 35 lb. LabJack Terrorist. I did so with the grace and eloquence of any middle aged man wearing denim shorts and an old pair of New Balance shoes who does his own yard work.
Once I was about 80% done with the yard, the mower stopped on me as I traversed the real estate around all of the shrubbery on the perimeter. This was unusual, as I can typically gas up the mower once and do the whole yard.
I checked the tank, and it looked low.
Dagnabbit.
Now I have to walk through the house to the garage to get the gas can, and break my stride in the process.
A few minutes later, the mower had been gassed back up and I was ready to finishing this thing off.
I hit the primer button a few times, and pulled the cord to start ‘r back up.
Chuga-chuga.
Hit the primer button a few more times and take another crack at it.
No change.
I am not going to let this thing get the best of me, so I decided to assert myself a little more.
I grabbed the cord, and pulled it with just enough strength to shred the appendix or other innards of a man my age. For what it’s worth, I didn’t shred my appendix. I didn’t bust open a hernia, or tear a ligament or anything. Instead, I ripped the cord right out of its housing.
Dagnabbit.
Okay, fine. I needed to service the mower anyway. Why not replace the pull cord while I’m at it?
Another day, of course. It’s Sunday afternoon, and Game of Thrones will be on soon. I’ll pick up a cord tomorrow and get the whole thing done this week.
Now of course you may think that the instance of me pulling the cord completely out of the housing was the point where I experienced my moment of idiocy.
To wit, I say nay-nay.
Nope.
My idiocy revealed itself when I got the mower back to the garage. As I was folding the handle back up and preparing to return the mower and it’s tray table back to its upright position, I discovered that the spark plug cable was disconnected.
That’s why the mower stopped on me earlier. It wasn’t for a lack of gas. It happened when I was pushing the mower up under the shrubbery, a branch had caught itself on the cable and pulled it away from where it should have been.
Had I checked the cable at the same time I checked the gas, I would have solved the issue immediately and not created an opportunity to tear my Briggs & Stratton 6.5 HP lawnmower with the 21″ blade apart in order to change out a pull cord.
Dagnabbit.
