The lawn mower incident

Date: 2007.06.17 | Category: I'm just saying, Worth Reading Again, family | Tags:

I wrote this as a guest post for Michele in 2005, but I’ve never posted it here. In honor of Father’s DayI’m sharing it today.

My dad loves this story, he tells it all the time. Trust me when I say that my version is much better. You guys really lucked out…..

When I was a kid I thought I could do anything, and get away with it.. I was sooooooooooooo smart. Yep, that’s me. Super. Duper. Smart.

We lived in the suburbs, on an acre lot, where we had dozens of mature trees surrounding the house. Further away, along the lot lines, there were little pine saplings that my dad had planted. There were about six in a row, spaced approximately 15 feet apart, and slightly staggered. It looked like we had sticks planted in the ground, as they were about 2′ tall, and didn’t have any branches.

My parents watered their little trees all the time. They obviously really liked these trees, but in all honestly, I didn’t care too much about them. They were waaaaaaaaaay on the edges of the yard, and mostly just obstacles when I cut the lawn.

I was about 12 years old, and couldn’t see much past my 12 year old self. It was my job to mow the lawn, and I did it as efficiently as possible. In my mind, that meant one thing, driving the riding lawn mower in the highest gear possible, thereby going super fast, and being able to cut the lawn in two hours, rather than three.

Let me be the first to tell you that mowing the lawn in that high of a gear was tough. There was no possible way I could be expected to make it around all of those little pine saplings every single time. Some of the maneuvers I did were darn right tricky! I had no special training, yet I attempted to zigzag around those sticks like I was a race car driver.

One day, I ran one of those little suckers over. In my defense, the sun was probably in my eyes. And, I was going pretty fast.

I stopped the lawn mower, got off, and walked over to what looked to me like a stick with some pine needles on it (i.e., the pine tree sapling), which had been shot out of the mower about 10 feet away from where the root was planted. What should I do? Well, I thought to myself, all the rest of them really just look like planted sticks, right? Why not just stick it back in the ground? My dad will never even notice. And if he does, it’ll be weeks and weeks later, maybe even next year!!! By then, he’ll never be able to figure out it was me, it’ll be some mystery that’s never solved! Or maybe he’ll think it just died naturally. Sometimes trees just fall right over and die. By George, I’m brilliant!

Turns out, I wasn’t so brilliant. My dad noticed I had run over the trees within hours. And, he knew it was me. I had to mow the lawn in first gear the rest of that summer, and most of the summers that followed.

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