When my husband and I first moved into our house, I vowed I would take care of all of the yard work myself – mowing, raking, planting, plucking, pruning, weed-whacking and even making a lovely rock garden.
I had big plans.
However, due to my fear of using anything with power, I
decided to use only primitive tools. My first purchase was an old-fashioned
push-mower, which was about one step above cutting the grass with a scythe.
Anything thicker than a blade of grass (such as a dandelion) required me to mow
over it 20 or 30 times before the mower either finally cut it, or the dandelion
became so flattened out, it didn’t have the strength to pop up again. Sometimes
I got so fed up, I just bent over and yanked out all of the stubborn stuff by
hand.
So after a few months of struggling, I finally decided to
move out of the Stone Age and climb the next rung on the ladder of lawnmower
evolution. That step was an electric lawnmower. I figured that going from an
old push-mower directly to a modern gas-powered mower would be such a drastic
change for me, I’d probably end up accidentally de-whiskering the neighbor’s
cat with it. So an electric mower seemed as if it would be a bit tamer and easier
to control.
The clerk at the hardware store showed me a nice lightweight model.
His sales pitch particularly piqued my interest when he said I wouldn’t have to
worry about gas, oil or spark plugs, the way I’d have to with a gas-powered
mower. And when he demonstrated that all I’d have to do was plug in the mower
and press a little bar on the handle to make it work, I was sold. Too often, I
had seen my neighbors, red-faced, short of breath and heavily perspiring,
double over from hernia-induced pain after they’d yanked the pull-cords on
their gas-powered mowers three or four hundred times without succeeding in getting the
machines to do anything more than sputter, cough and die.
And with my luck, I was pretty sure if I ever tried to start one of those, I’d also end up sputtering,
coughing and dying.
So I bought the electric mower and a thick, 12-gauge, 100-foot
extension cord, then headed home to mow my lawn.
I loved the mower. It sliced through even the toughest weeds
as easily as a hot knife through butter. Unfortunately, it also just as easily sliced
through part of the extension cord when I accidentally ran over it.
From the moment I tried my new mower, I developed an instant
hatred for that extension cord. For one thing, 100 feet of thick, outdoor-type
cord felt as if it weighed about the same as a ship’s anchor. To keep the cord
away from the mower, I tried slinging it over my shoulder, but it was so heavy,
it made my knees buckle. So I had no choice other than to let it drag behind me.
I soon learned that dragging a 100-foot cord behind me had
its hazards. For one thing, the cord slid through every disgusting thing in the
yard or in the vicinity of the yard – from mud and dirt to doggy souvenirs and poison
ivy. And when I turned around to mow in the opposite direction, the cord suddenly
crossed in front of me and made me do some pretty fancy footwork...to avoid
tripping over it and landing in the aforementioned mud, dirt, doggy souvenirs and
poison ivy.
Because of the cord, it took me longer to mow the lawn with
the electric mower than it ever did with the push mower. I spent so much time
untangling the cord from around trees, stumps, rocks, branches, the porch's legs and
my own legs, I forgot why I was out in the yard. And whenever I tried to fling
the cord out of my way, it inevitably landed in a bush or over a low-hanging
branch. I think I even accidentally strangled a squirrel with it.
Another problem was the only outdoor electrical outlet at our
house was on the front side of the house, so I had to pull the cord around two
corners to get it out to the back yard. And every time I pulled on it too hard,
it unplugged. I walked back to that outlet so many times to plug in the cord
again, I wore a path through the grass.
But at least that path was one place I didn’t have to worry
about mowing anymore.
And maybe I had crazy bees in my area, but they actually
seemed to be attracted to the humming noise the lawnmower made, because they
kept buzzing around me as I mowed. Either that, or I accidentally knocked their nest out of
a tree when I flung the cord into the branches.
But I stuck with the mower for an entire summer and I have to
confess my lawn really did look good.
However, after ruining about six of the heavy-duty extension cords, I learned two valuable lessons: (1). It’s not such a smart idea to buy green extension cords when they are going to be used in green grass, and (2). It actually can be cheaper (and much safer) in the long run to hire someone else to take care of your yard.
To be honest, the fact that the electrical outlet on the front of the house suddenly stopped working after the last time I ran over the extension cord, and I actually felt a jolt when it happened, might…just might…have had something to do with my decision to get an entirely new mower...a human one.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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