I never really wanted to mow the lawn when I was a
teenager. Nothing about it appealed to
me. Mowing the yard at my house meant pushing (and pushing, and pushing) a
heavy, noisy machine over rough ground for what seemed like hours. With more
weeds than grass, and more rocks than weeds, I just couldn’t tell it was worth
the pain and suffering. Once I was finished, the yard would still be full of inorganic
debris, and what grass remained would be less visible than before I started.
Soon I’d be sneezing and scratching my legs, my clothes soaked and my face
dripping. My eyes would be burning from the dirt in the air, and my sweat would
become mud streaks down my face.
And then
there were the bugs. They’d fly up out of the ground all around the mower and
my feet. I could feel them inside my clothes, crawling up and down, biting and
pinching me all over. Is that sweat dripping down my back, or is it a creature
looking for a place to live? I’d slap my clothes where I can feel movement,
hoping to either dry the drip of sweat or kill the creature underneath. I was
pretty sure it was a creature.
As an adult, these memories apparently still drive
my feelings about mowing. Now that I have my own house and yard, we put more
emphasis on having nice grass to cover the ground, and the mower pulls itself
over our small yard without so much effort. I use a surgical mask to filter the
allergens away from my sensitive sinuses, and I mow earlier in the day, wearing
a hat to reduce the effects of the direct sun. With these improvements in my
mowing situation, am I happy to mow? No. I push myself out the door, knowing
that the job has to be done.
Who started this idea of mowing yards, anyway? I
can imagine some caveman carrying a limp wildebeest to the cave after his daily
commute to the nearby herd, stopping by the cave entrance to break off the top
of a weed that grew too tall. His cavelady points to another weed a few feet
away and grunts, “Ungh!” The caveman drags his knuckles over to the second weed
and breaks off the top. He turns to look back at the cavelady; she smiles
coyly, and gestures toward more weeds. The caveman, clearly pleased with the
direction this activity is taking, looks around and sees that this could take a
while. He passes the wildebeest to his cavelady, grunts softly in her ear, and
sets about the business of breaking the tops off of all the weeds in the area. This
scene is repeated every so often until the weed breaking becomes routine, and
ultimately evolves into an aesthetic form of “cave entry area cultivation.”
The Iron Age saw the invention of a crude blade on
a handle, and that allowed men to stand more or less upright while cutting the
tops of the weeds at about the same height. People are always looking for ways
to improve things, though, and soon there were blades on wheels that turned and
cut the plants uniformly. This eventually led to competitions among
neighborhoods to show that one yard caretaker could make a more pleasing yard
than his neighbors. The winner got the wildebeest drumstick.
My yard is not the prettiest in the neighborhood.
It’s not that I prefer being looked down on by the other homeowners—it’s just
not the way I prefer to spend my time. Saturdays are meant for sleeping late
and reading the paper, not for fighting a losing battle with nature.
One recent Saturday, though, I compromised (I only
slept a little late) and dragged myself to the lawn machinery, braced for
conquest.
We keep our lawn mower in the garage with other
implements of torture and destruction. Open garages are not pretty sights (mine
isn’t, anyway), so I take the garage door remote with me to allow me to operate
the door as needed. On previous occasions I have put the remote in my pants
pocket, but I found that bending and pushing against the mower would activate
the door control, so this time I clipped the remote to my belt. I touched the button
after leaving the garage, and started my battle with nature. Finished with one
side yard and the front, I started down the small strip of grass on the other
side of the house. A few seconds later, I was startled by the familiar tingle
of spider webs across both bare arms. I
reacted instinctively to Nature’s attack by quickly wiping my upper body to rid
myself of any spiders and webs that I obviously could not see. Had those
horrible strings been broken so I could get through? I inched forward again,
and again the strings activated my nervous reaction. I gave no thought to how I
looked to anyone who might see me flailing my arms in the air, attacking this
unseen enemy. Finally, I was able to proceed and finish the side yard. When I
made my way back to the place where I broke the web earlier, there was a sudden
noise, like when I used to run over a rock with the mower. My eyes were
directed down to a chewed-up collection of black plastic and electronics. I quickly
checked my belt, where the shiny metal clip remained hanging, but without the
garage door opener remote it normally held.
I knew right away what had happened.
The spider did it.
