Five Reasons Mowing the Lawn Has Become More Than Just an Inconvenience

So, yesterday, my mother gave me an ultimatum.  She said that the grass around our house needed to be cut, and I was the one who was destined to do it.  She didn't use those words exactly, but I got the feeling that's what she really meant.

Because, let's face it.  I am Lord of the Toro.  I have the three Deathly Lawn Tools.  I have the mark of the landscaper.  I weild the lawnmower-blade.  I am the chosen one. The grass is strong in this one.

Or, more accurately, I was the only one home and awake who would do this horrid deed.

(By the way, if you successfully guess all seven of those references, you'll probably be the love of my life.  Good luck, random reader in Germany.  That's right, I check my stats.  Thank you for reading.  You're amazing.  Give yourself some Currywurst, dude or dudette, because you are sehr toll.)

And now that I've probably creeped out the one person from Germany who read this to the point of never accessing my page again, I can start my story.

See, I've been at a good lawn-mowing age for a good six or seven years, which, coincidentally enough, is about how old our old lawnmower is.  Over these few years, my parents have gradually realized that not only CAN I cut the grass, I can do it more often than I would like to.

So naturally, I've found lots of ways to complain about it.  It's what I do.

Here are five of those reasons.  

Yeah, I spent some time on MS Paint and Photoshop for this.  It's because you, my dozen readers, are worth it.

I feel like a L'Oréal ad.


But back to the list.  See, my first few times mowing the lawn, my mom conveniently told me where and which direction to walk in, be it horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

When I asked her why, she responded with "So the tire tracks on the mower don't push the grass down forever, giving our backyard stripes."

Now, personally, I'd feel like the coolest person in the world if my backyard was striped, and to be fully honest, I'd be perfectly content with cutting the grass in a way that would not just give my back yard stripes, but also possibly a message to passing airplanes.  But no.  Mom and Dad like their plain old green grass, and my heart was crushed.

Well, not really, but it would have made me a lot more excited to do this kind of thing.

So, I listened to her.  But over the years, I began to notice that the grass just pop up after like two or three hours after being rolled over so that after a day or so you couldn't tell which way you mowed.  But I decided not to really say anything about it and to dismiss it as that irrefutable Mom-logic (you'll shoot your eye out, don't cross your eyes or they'll stick like that), and let it slide because I hate monotony.

However, there is apparently another option.  To go diagonally.

Diagonally.  DI. AG. ON. AL. LY.

Cool side story, JK Rowling took Diagon Alley's name from the word "diagonally."  But that doesn't make mowing my lawn diagonally any cooler.  Trust me.  It's hard enough to go up a hill with a lawn mower when you are going vertically or horizontally.  I will take a little dose of monotony for the sake of efficiency.

Also, my parents still liberally remind me to do it differently than I did last time, because, admittedly, sometimes I just need to have something drilled into my head multiple times to accept it as reality.

Keep the jokes clean, people.

But speaking of efficiency, it's unbelievably tedious to mow the front of my house in the horizontal fashion because we have a distinct lack of space.  So basically, I've been mowing those parts the same way using the same paths for the past three months.

Sorry, Mom.

It looks just the same, though.

The grass in my backyard is constantly at a very awkward state.  It's too long to be deemed acceptable for my parents/society, but it's still too short to house wild Pokémon, and seeing as I only have a year left to realize my childhood dream of becoming a Pokémon master before I have to go off to college and actually get a real goal in life, I seriously think that I need to at least give myself a chance, here.

Mom and Dad both say to mow the lawn anyway because Pokémon don't exist, but I know that it's only because they refuse to take care of my new friends when I'm off being a collegiate.  How inconsiderate.

See, when it comes to me doing anything around the house, my parents have come to learn that the only thing that works in terms of getting me to do anything is to establish a deadline.  So instead of asking me politely to do it (which is nicer but will not get me to do it), my mother will usually walk up and tell me that the grass needs to be cut by X o'clock, then go about her day.  That's not what I'm complaining about, by the way.  I always get it done by the deadline.

The problem is not the deadline.

The problem is the complications with the deadline.

My mom picks terrible days to set deadlines.  For example:

Weather is sunny and 75.  A nice cool breeze is blowing, and everyone is talking about the true beauty in the day.  Mom comes to me and says something along the lines of "Good Mowing weather."

Yeah, Mom.  You forget, I'm gonna be the surly teenager now.  You forgot that not only do you need to remind me at half-hour intervals, but you must also be sure to say it in an incredibly angry voice.

Weather is also sunny, but the temperature is 95.  A storm is coming in at about 6:00.  It's about 2:00 now, and the humidity is at about 80%.  Mom says "I want the grass cut before dark."

Greeeeeaaaaaaaaat.

Now, I don't know about you, but I really like to mow the lawn without running into things.  There are two constants in this:  dog chewing objects and low hanging branches.  Not pleasant.

Now, officially, we have two dogs, but I like to consider them as the dog and the poo-vaccuum, because not only is feces a constant staple in the other dog's diet, he eats poo like Sarah Palin needs to eat her words.

Did I just make a political funny?  Wow.  Something new every day.

Anyway, you'd think that this poo-vaccuum would be perfectly content with following the dog around, waiting for him to whip up some tasty morsels, and there are many times where he's fully content on doing so, but clearly he is not.

See, every time I mow the lawn, I like to pick up their chewed up stuff.  Not because I don't want to chop them up and have those poor souls go without some good chews for a while; mostly because I don't want bone fragments flying at my shins.

I haven't played soccer in nearly six years.  There are no shin guards within a mile radius of my house.

So, you'd think I'd have about two bones and maybe a stick to pick up, right?  Well, I counted.

Seven bones.

Four huge sticks.

Eight small sticks.

12 apples.

Uncountable amount of small sticks.

Not pleasant.

But, see the bones are pretty easy to find and eliminate the problem.  I can set them far away from the grass and not have to worry about them until the next time I pull that stupid machine out of the shed again.  See, the trees are a whole other monster.

Trees are great, up until you have to navigate through them.  And boy, do we have trees.  We have so many trees in our yard, there's probably more leaves and pine needles than blades of grass out there.  And while a tree trunk is just a few more seconds added on to your mowing time, having the trees defend their grassy brethren is just a considerable pain in the neck.

But trees can't fight, right?

Yeah, I tried telling myself that.  Then I go out there and get stabbed a good four or five times with a low-hanging branch.  It's not a successful day of yard work if I don't return from it nursing at least three small wounds, whether they are from angry tree branches stabbing me, getting caught in my lawnmower, or whipping me in the face.

See, low-hanging branches are pretty neat when you're five or younger and you start to feel really good about being able to touch a branch of a huge tree.  At least until your growth spurt comes.  Then you just feel terrible because those finally-in-reach branches are suddenly not so cool anymore.  They become violent, almost as if they played too much Grand Theft Auto or something.

See,  the expanse of grass that I am told to mow has a lot of these branches, but fortunately for me, it seems that most of them are only a mild inconvenience, requiring just a simple duck to get around.

Except for one tree in the corner of the back yard, which has gradually become the bane of my existence.

I nicknamed it Lucifer.  Lucy, for short.

No I didn't.  But I'll say I did for the sake of this blog post.

See, where most of the trees in the backyard are fine with just chilling with their lowest branches at about three feet off of the ground, Lucy is fully content with just rubbing his greasy little leaves all over the grass, making it near-impossible to walk through just by myself, let alone with a mechanical contraption that's half my weight.

Lucy also happens to be positioned ever so nicely on the only part of hill in my backyard, so not only do I have to go around him, I get to do it on a 35-degree angle.

Not pleasant.

It's trees like Lucy that really make me hate Arbor Day.

The number one reason mowing the lawn has become more than just an inconvenience with me?

I'm a surly teenager who likes to complain.

Expecting something more?  Oh well.