Are there household chores that you never did as a child? Mowing the lawn was always one for me, because I’m fairly certain my parents believed I would lose a limb trying to cut grass. That was probably a safe bet for them considering I fell down a hill walking the dog (in a rainstorm) and tore my meniscus.
Anyway…
Fast forward 26 years later and I still had not mowed a lawn…until Saturday. It is very likely Judy was beginning to think she was living on a wild savannah as she jumped through weeds to do her daily business. Fed up with trying to clean her paws from brush, I took a stand.
A stand against a lawnmower.
I whipped that sucker out of the garage, figured out how to start it, mowed a patch about the size of postage stamp and listened as the whole thing went put put put…turn off.
Well crap, I guess it’s out of gas. No biggie, I’ll just get more.
I loaded that sucker up into the back of my (very tiny) compact car and off I drove to the gas station. I pulled right up, popped off the gas lid and turned to begin fueling when I heard a guy’s voice..
“Ma’m! Ma’m!”
(surely he’s not talking to me, right?”
“Ma’m! Ma’m! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”
(who? me?)
“Miss, you’ve never handled power equipment before have you?”
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE—the fact that I have a mower hanging out of this tiny car or that I just learned to start this beast an hour ago?
So, here’s your life lesson–you can’t take a lawn mower directly to the gas station to fill it up. Turns out, it’s illegal.
Full disclosure: My mom had suggested I buy a gas can to fill with gas to fill the lawn mower, but I pish-poshed that idea because–I don’t want that can sitting around, that’s silly.
Turns out the second life lesson for today is: Always listen to your mother.
Happy Thursday!
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