The LawnMaven® 6000
Like all Mothers Days, our celebrating Her Highness began with flowers, cards, homemade gifts, overtures of love, promises of undying gratitude, breakfast in bed, and then buying a new lawnmower but getting her to think it was her idea.
Now, I don’t recommend such extreme maneuvers to you younger dudes fresh off the wedding altar. Things like this are not for novitiates, and I can’t be held responsible for any of you young bucks stumbling into potential minefields with all the subtlety of a clown car.
So, gather round, my young padawans and listen and learn.
It all began with the lawnmore we’ve had since God was an altar boy and how someone (NOT ME) left it out every year all winter long, subjecting it all the forces of nature, extreme temperatures, corroded spark plugs, pull mechanisms which pull-twang-snap-zip-slinged their way across the backyard and landed in a tree.
Okay, actually it was me but I don’t think that need factor into this story.
What does factor in, however, is how every spring time I’d have to heft the stupid thing into the beloved SUV and ambulance it to the local toy store hardware store for its annual Let Me Get This Straight…You Mow With This POS? Which is Hardware Store Boyspeak for “You Are A Loser And We All Know It By What You ‘Mow’ With.”
And then two or three weeks later (read: It Never Occurred To Me To Beat The Rush), I’d get a phone call from Hardware Store Boy telling me the machine had something like a new lease on life, albeit temporary. At best.
During that two or three weeks I’d borrow my neighbor’s lawnmower. And this neighbor is my buddy Bill. Bill is cool. Bill is awesome. Bill will hate anyone I hate and has never once failed to gripe about anything with me. He is as dependable as they come, borrows all my stuff while I borrow all his stuff, and has mastered The Guy Look.
The Guy Look: The Guy Look is that look guys give other guys when there is no way they can (or want to) risk verbalizing what’s going through their head while every child ever sired is pecking them to death like ducks while their wives are off making more lists of Things They Must Do To Prove They Love Me And If They Don’t That Means They Don’t Love Me This Minute Anymore And Must Pay. Bill is a master at this look. We’ve passed it to one another across crowded rooms, packed backyards, at soccer games, in our cars when we pass on the street, and in the silent recesses of our Very Man Hearts where we live slowly trodding this mortal coil wondering how in the world we ended up where we are instead of where we thought we would (when we were nine) which was killing the bad guys.
And, yes, even though that nine-year-old perspective also had us in our underwear wearing swim goggles and a towel tied around our necks, it was cool. But rather on the wanting side, we realize that now…
…
…okay, I completely lost my train of thoug—
Oh wait.
Mothers Day.
So my Mothers Day gift to Cute Redhead was Servitude. I would be her drone, her slave, her minion, her cabana boy. I would garden, plant, move this, fix that, and hunt-and-gather whatever she deemed worthy the whim.
But then I decided the Amazon Rainforest doubling as my backyard needed a good trimming. And so I announced that I would lean into the task. And then she announced that I would likely do no such thing because the lawnmower had gone to be with Jesus.
*hands on hips
*scowls in the face of Very Manly Task (mowing the lawn)
And then I said (and here comes the professional part) (professional because of this):
Did you know that the human body undergoes, oversees, and experiences roughly 12 billion chemical reactions a second? A. SECOND.
12 billion. To give you a better appreciation of this number, consider this: if you started counting today, it would take you about 11 weeks to count all the way to 1 million.
And if you started counting today, with 1 billion in your sights, you would reach that number in
32 years.
That’s the scope we’re talking about.
Times 12.
12 billion chemical reactions a second.
That is beyond amazing and why no computer will ever achieve anything like Artificial Intelligence let alone Operating System Superiority.
Unless it’s a Mac.
Now…in that split-second where I realize the lawnmower had passed to the other side, one of those 12 billion reactions sparked along the synaptic byway of Male Limbic Brain. It’s very technical and I hope you’ve brushed up on your college physics because I don’t have time to break this down for the layman. Here is chemical reaction:
I Want A New Lawn Mower.
Which all by itself in no way results in Gets New Lawnmower if you’re married because it has to play out like a mutual decision. However, any mutual decision that leads off with Her Deciding It Must Happen transcends the pedestrian rules governing humans and is immediately ushered to the front of the line.
And it goes like this:
“Happy Mothers Day!” *kiss
*leans cheek toward Offered Kiss
“Thank you!”
“I shall mow the lawn for you! Yay!”
“Um. No. You left the lawnmower outside all winter again, Brainwave. It has breathed its last.”
“Wha–?? But…”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“But…I wanted to mow the lawn! For you!” (lie)
“I know you were, sweetheart. I love how you do these things For Me.” (lie)
*defeated “I suppose I should take it in. Or maybe I should just get a new one.”
Now, right here, I was on a razor’s edge. This next move was, I don’t mind saying, brilliant. It went like this:
“I bet [typical hardware store] has some good ones.”
“No. I’d go to Sears.”
*feigns subserviency “…Well. Okay. I mean, if that’s what you think makes the most sense.” *shrug
“Yes. Sears. You should go to Sears.”
And so I went to Sears and came home with the LawnMaven® 6000.
Okay, it’s not really called that at all but it is in the Party Inside My Head.
I love this thing. It has all kinds of cool features, all of which are eclipses by the (go up and look at the photo one more time) Little Blue Thing by the back wheel there.
Do you know what that is? This is hilarious and awesome and the feature Sears Hardware Section Lady almost got kissed right on the mouth for:
After you’re done mowing, you HOOK. UP. THE. HOSE. to that little blue nozzle—and turn on the water full blast while The Bunker Busting SodMonster™ XSi is ON—
And
it
cleans
itself.
Dude.
Mark is muttering to himself and wondering how he let Mother’s Day pass without employing your craftiness(having literaly JUST returned from the outdated-mower-parts store where he feels he was ridiculed by the 12 year old clerk who waited on him.)
I believe he would like some guidance as to the appropriate next move?
I suppose the obvious choice is that I “let him” buy himself a new mower (at Sears, OF COURSE) for Father’s Day?
And speaking of old mowers, the mower in question is the very same Snapper that I used (with reluctance and a huge attitude, if my parents are to be believed) when we lived in St. Clair.
Uhmmmmmm. Is that bad?