The grass mowing contest is already over

(715 words)

I’ve been hesitant to share this news because I know it’s bound to disappoint fellow idlers who look upon me and my buddy as the Frazier-Ali of laziness, two heavyweights when it came to avoiding lightweight work.

Our competition was heated, but never bitter.

We never come to blows because we never come to mows.

Yes, it’s that time of year when Paul and I engage in our contest to see who can be the last to mow his lawn.

It’s been going on for 8 years. We’re now tied 4-4.

I have it all marked down on the hood of my trusty John Deere. I have all the dates of my first cuts and the number of times I cut.

For those of you scoring at home, I’m on a roll. I’ve won the last three springs. 

My HOF year was ’14 when I was like the ’27 Yankees, known for mowing down opponents. The only difference between me, Ruth, Gehrig and the gang was I didn’t mow shit.

I didn’t cut my grass that spring until May 28 and wound up doing it just nine times the entire summer.

By contrast, many of my neighbors have cut their grass nine times the last three weeks.

Think of the leisure time they’ve lost, the recreations they’ve missed, the gas they’ve wasted, and all the petrodollars they’d funneled into the pockets of those nasty Saudi schools where the boys are taught to hate beer-bellied patriots like Paul and I.

And I’m just guessing that part about Saudi robes having pockets. For all I know they use fanny packs.

But this year something shifted. My victory seems hollow.

Paul piked.

He says he got a new mower and was too eager to try it out to endure the competition.

I knew he was lying. There are plenty of other lawns in the neighborhood he could have mowed. I think, too, he has some shag carpet in his basement that’s looking dated.

He knows all this. In fact, one year he won because his anal neighbor got so fed up with the unsightliness of his lawn, he cut it himself.

It was controversial. True, he hadn’t cut his own lawn, hadn’t paid anyone to cut it for him or hadn’t adopted a pet goat.

All he’d done was hide behind the curtain and cackle as the goody-goody spent 90-minutes cutting his grass because it was so unsightly.

It was brilliant.

That’s why this year’s victory seems so hollow.

It’s like something special has gone away. Been mowed down to be precise.

He told me he’d cut his grass in April. April!

It was a complete capitulation.

I mercilessly berated him and reminded him of all the people he’d let down.

What I didn’t say was this was the year I was going to throw in the towel.

Like him I suspect, I just didn’t have the stomach for it.

So I cut mine May 5, the earliest ever recorded for me.

The pressure was just too great. I’d go the grocery store and see grown men with admirational tears in their eyes. They’d ask if I’d cut it yet. I’d tell them, no, I was still holding out. They’d high-five me.

To extend the grassy metaphor, I was the stem and they were rooting for me.

But I faced the opposite pressure at home every day. The kids were complaining about losing the dog when they let him out to wee.

Worse, I realize how unwise it is for a man in my precarious position to antagonize a wife already suspicious of my inability to sustain our family.

After all, I’m the guy who when she asks where I go in the morning says, “Off to work!” And then spends the day composing this stupid godforsaken deadbeat blog.

I could see her one day leaving me a note saying she’d left me for another man, one with a neatly trimmed lawn.

It’d be a rare occurrence of a husband getting a Dear John letter over a John Deere situation.

Funny thing is, I know what we do is inspiring to many men. They think Paul and I are really onto something.

Oh, well. The grass is always greener.

And now it’s also shorter.

Related …

I may never cut my grass again

Reduce deficits: grow grass (not that kind)

Victory lap in Mow-town!

My neighbor, my Deere

Growing concerns about grass, toenails

Lamenting the inaugural mow

(754 words)

I have some disappointing news for those of you who live vicariously through me and my edgy existence.

Yesterday, I betrayed both you and everything for which this blog’s stands.

I gave up. I surrendered to grinding conformities.

Yes, I mowed my lawn.

You didn’t think I was going to say I accepted a full-time job, did you?

In some ways, cutting my grass May 7 is the far greater capitulation.

Getting a job, an aspect of living also popular among conformists, would make a lot of sense.

Cutting the grass makes none.

First of all, it burns gas and we still import a lot of fossil fuels from regimes hostile to America. So every time I cut the grass I believe I’m helping fund jihad.

Second, cutting it now only accelerates the need to cut the grass again. By cutting it yesterday, I’ve ensured it’ll need cut again in just four days.

That means I’ve cheated my happy existence out of two hours I could otherwise devote to either blogging, napping or sitting in a darkened tavern chatting with cheerful inebriates, the trio of non-productive pastimes that give me ample time to brainstorm theories like: “routine lawn care equals jihad.”

Third, and most important, the news that I’ve cut my grass bestows bragging rights upon friend Paul.

We’ve for years had a contest to see which of us is the last to mow our respective yards.

It’s maybe the silliest endeavor in which I participate all year — and that’s coming from a guy who answers, “Blog!” when asked what he does for a living.

Last year’s contest ended in controversy when Paul’s neighbor got so revolted over the appearance of his yard that he came over and did it himself while Paul laughed maniacally from behind the curtains.

He contended that since he didn’t cut it, it didn’t count.

It was the most divisive outcome since the year our electric garage door malfunctioned and my John Deere was for three weeks marooned like some wheeled green ship in a bottle.

But last year profoundly affected me. I didn’t cut my grass until May 27 and wound up cutting the lawn just nine times all summer. 

It was an epiphany. I realized the longer I could hold out, the less it’d need cut.

I only wish the same logic applied to things like toenails and nose hairs.

Emboldened, I figured this year I’d try and go clear through Flag Day before the inaugural mow, not to be confused with the inaugural Moe, which Stooge purists consider “Soup To Nuts.”

But I didn’t anticipate the residual and still-seething vitriol from last year’s triumph.

Josie, 14, said, “Please tell me you’re not still doing that stupid lawn contest again. It’s really embarrassing.”

That this hurt is obvious. What’s worse how poorly it bodes for her eventual reaction to my annual beard growing contest.

Val was more subtle. She asked if I could please at least trim around the front so she could enjoy seeing the Lilies of the Valley she planted in the mulch she spread (she has no trouble conforming to prevailing homeowner mores). 

I sensed she’d eventually ask if I could please trim around the front because it looks from inside like someone’d painted all the windows green.

My buddies were all involved, too. They were cutting their grass once every four or five days. 

One neighbor keeps his property looking just like an immaculate country club. That he just so happens to be Arnold Palmer and the property is Latrobe Country Club is besides the point.

Pressure was building.

It felt in my gut the way it feels when you’re blazing down the interstate with the needle hard on E and decide — screw it — I’m going to see if I can make it just one more exit.

In play in all this, as always, is my precarious financial situation. I’m booking speaking engagements, but those are months off. Times are hard.

I won’t prove my family worth until I return from the hunt and toss the slaughtered meat on the table.

What can I say? Some husbands secure understanding by plying their wives with jewelry and fancy clothes.

Me, I mow the lawn.

What stinks is the realization the one made most cheerful by this awful emasculation isn’t even anyone in my family.

Doggone it, it’s Paul.

Because he above all others knows that Thursday I severed something more important to guys like us than the top of our grass.

Related . . .

Victory lap in Mow-town

I may never cut my grass again

Growing concerns about grass, toenails

Reduce deficits: grow grass (not that kind)

My neighbor, my Deere

RRS: "I may never cut my grass again"

Will you be cutting your grass today? I won’t. I have at least two weeks before it's even a consideration. Yes, it’s time for my annual contest with my buddy Paul to see who can be the last lawn mowing hold-out. This is from last May 16, two weeks before I cut my grass for the first time. In fact, at the end of last year, I'd cut the grass just nine times. 

(927 words)

 Think growing grass in Colorado is controversial? You ought to stop by my house where the people aren’t high, but the grass is.

Because of my annual involvement in a silly contest I’ve yet to cut my grass. It looks like the backdrop from one of those safari nature shows. A hundred-head herd of bison could graze there and never go hungry.

Every year me and my buddy Paul see who can go longest without first cutting the lawn. There’s no wager, no stakes, just pride of a job, well, not done.

It’s partly because I’m philosophically opposed to ever mowing the lawn.

Why?

I’m patriotic. Can you imagine how much fuel America could save if we all agreed to cut the lawn just once a month? Arab sheiks would overnight become our baristas.

And just think of the boon it would mean to leisure life, which is the priority element of my entire existence.

Paul used to really gloat about it. It’d be this time of year and he’d asked if I’d cut my grass.

“About half a dozen times,” I’d say.

“I’ve yet to cut mine even once. So if it takes you about an hour to cut your grass, then I’m up six hours of bar time on you.”

It gnawed on me. But that was seven years ago when we lived in a traditional neighborhood where the lawns abut one another. Mine happened to abut with an ass who was anal about his grass.

So if he’d cut his grass to about an inch, the demarcation line between his neatly trimmed lawn and my shaggy one looked to passing motorists as dramatic as one of those night time satellite pictures over the Korean peninsula where the South is bright and illuminated and the North appears desolate.

This contrast, too, could be seen from outer space.

But I was less of a free thinker back then. I’d bend to prevailing conformities. So he’d cut his grass and in the next day or so I’d feel compelled to cut mine to match.

I finally figured out a creative solution to that vexing neighbor conflict.

I packed up the whole family, all our stuff, and we moved to a house up in the woods with no adjacent properties. Cars roar past at 50 mph, too quick to tsk tsk my casual landscaping. The only people who’d ever see it were the garbagemen who didn’t give a crap and the kids’ school bus driver and the only opinion of hers I care about is whether she thinks it’s wise to get gooned up before she drives my kids to and from school, so we were cool.

Between Paul and I, it was game on.

He is a formidable foe. I think he beat me three years in a row. I didn’t taste victory until the fourth year when our new garage door fell victim to failed mechanics. Improperly installed, it wouldn’t open and needed parts shipped in.

And if the door didn’t open, it was impossible for me to for three weeks in May get the mower out. It was as if my trusty John Deere tractor was a twin-bladed ship in a bottle.

It went on so long one of the neighbors said he thought we’d moved.

We’ve traded the title been back and forth the last few years. We really should have some kind of trophy, maybe of a guy passed out in a hammock, or maybe the loser should present the winner with a bouquet of weeds.

This year the pressure’s been torqued up on me. Josie, 13, confronted me with her uneasiness about the height of the grass. She’d been playing catch out front with the dog and couldn’t find him for an hour.

“You really need to cut it, Dad,” she said. “It’s getting embarrassing.”

“You’re embarrassed by grass?” I asked before roaring with laughter. “You just wait, hon! In a couple of years you’re going to be nostalgic for the days when the only thing about me that embarrassed you was my idea of lawn care! I’d advise you to go have a heart-to-heart talk with your mother about the fatherly sorts of embarrassments your future holds. ‘Ooh, Daddy, the grass is too high!’ Ha! Good one!”

I felt emboldened.

That’s why I was devastated Tuesday when Paul told me news that meant this year the contest would be mired in controversy.

“My neighbor got so disgusted by the look of my lawn he came over and cut it himself. I was inside hiding behind the curtains watching him the whole time. I had to stop myself from running out and showing him where he’d missed a spot.”

Yes! I’d won!

“Now, hold on,” he said. “I didn’t cut my grass. My neighbor did. My lawn mower hasn’t left the garage since October. My grass is cut, but I didn’t cut it and neither did my lawn mower. And I didn’t pay to have it done. I haven’t even thanked the guy.”

It was cunningly brilliant. He has his neighbor trained like a tractor-riding chimp. He now has zero incentive to ever cut his grass again. He think’s he’s won.

He’s wrong.

Josie’s already expressed her mortal embarrassment and she has a more vested interest in household appearances than some anal neighbor.

And the kid won’t be licensed to drive a John Deere tractor until 2017.

Related . . .

Victory lap in Mow-town!

Growing concerns about grass, toenails

My neighbor, my Deere

Reduce deficits: grow grass (not that kind)

Growing concerns about grass, toenails

My idea of a perfect day is anyone but me mowing my lawn while someone lovely gives me a pedicure.

It’s never happened. I don’t expect it ever will.

In peak growth season, I cut the grass at least once a week and my toenails -- they’re perennials -- about once every ten days.

Both ought to be cut more often, but they are maybe the two most dreary maintenance tasks of my entire existence.

I used to enjoy mowing the lawn at the old house where I had an old push mower. Guys get a pit crew rush out of any manual labor with a racing element.

I could speed mow the old lawn in 37 sweaty minutes. Of course, when it was done that rapidly, there were bound to be casualties. I’d carelessly mow down rose bushes, ornamental hedges and occasionally my sunbathing wife.

But it was always a thrill to dash to the ‘frig for some quencher suds and look up at the clock and see -- shazam! -- I’d shaved another 30 seconds off my best time.

That’s never happened when I mow my toes, the most tedious grooming task in a dapper gent’s life.

I’m forever barraged by advertisements hoping to get me to purchase pharmaceuticals that will get parts of me to grow. I’m thinking, of course, primarily of my hair and my penis.

No thanks.

I have all the hair I need.

For reasons of taste I’ll refrain from detailing the reasons why I don’t wish to see my intimacies extended. It’d be unseemly and I wouldn’t want to start a riot among the groupies.

But how come there’s no pill to halt toenail growth? It’s not like hair styles. You don’t get bored with the length of your toenails and one day think, what the hell, I think I’ll go for a Katy Perry look.

No, they’re just little utilitarian toe helmets. You can paint them, but I can’t imagine even the foot fetish deviants slobber over nail length.

I try and trim mine before they get long and sharp enough to sever Val’s Achille’s tendon when I crawl in for a snuggle.

I’ve only had one pedicure in my life and I recall it with the same emotional gratitude as the night I lost my virginity.

It was a revelation. I did it for a travel story and wrote about it in this very early blog post, one of my first 10 or so. The above picture is the result (you can play guess the feet!).

But I can’t justify paying someone to cut my toenails so at some point today I’ll grab the clippers and start rolling around on the floor like a chubby contortionist.

And I’d be mocked if I paid a kid to climb on the old John Deere and mow the lawn for me.

Most people would be more understanding if I’d get busted paying for sex with a prostitute, something a married man would never dream of doing -- at least admit out loud to dreaming of doing.

It’s probably true that I could find 100 prostitutes who’d take money to have sex with me, but none of them who’d take the same amount to come to my house and mow my lawn.

I guess they have their own set of standards which we’ll without further comment here call cockeyed.

This is just one of those days when I wish all the companies devoted to researching ways to make everything grow bigger and faster would about face and figure out ways to make everything stop growing.

I want things like my grass, my toe nails and my darling little daughters to stop growing and just stay the same as they are. Same goes for my sports leagues, the number of TV channels I receive or my waistline.

Enough with growth. Enough with expansion.

Please don’t grow alarmed at my odd melancholy.

The feeling will pass.

I’ll grow out of it.

My Neighbor, My Deere

I’d planned the afternoon with the precision of a military unit, albeit one where the stereotypical sexuality of the troops wasn’t really an issue.

GI Joe is never ordered to run out and get the eggs. But that was my first mission.

Fetching eggs may sound like lady’s work to some hombres. Not me.

See, we go organic. That meant driving by the local farmer’s market and getting for $1.75 a dozen delicious brown eggs. Had I not been on the clock, I’d have asked the farmer why the shells of healthy organic eggs are light brown.

I know the chickens that lay these brown eggs are treated far better than the factory ones that, perhaps out of subtle protest, lay ivory white ones. Why that is so is a mystery to me. But I like to support the people who treat their employees with dignity and respect, one handy exception being the suicidally prone Chinese drones responsible for making the Apple computer upon which I’m typing this bit of silliness.

But I had no time for chat. Next up was picking up The Outlaw Josie Rodell with the gals at the bus stop, another female job that falls to me while my wife is out at a real job bringing home the proverbial bacon.

(Is this post starting to make anyone else hungry for a really big breakfast?)

Mission accomplished. Next up was a true man’s job. I needed to get the John Deere tractor out and mow the lawn. I had one hour to do a job that takes about 57 minutes.

The reward for all this commotion was a night at the bar with the boys watching the historic debut of Washington Nationals pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg. Experts say he is one of the best ever.

I love climbing aboard the ol’ John Deere. First, it’s one of the most iconic brands in all American manufacturing. And it’s just one hell of a machine. My yard is strewn with rocks, deadfall and the odd beer can. It has dangerous elevation changes, tree obstacles and hidden gopher holes deep enough to upend the mower in less experienced hands.

My J.D. has four speeds, a reverse and a mowing deck that has 15 precise levels. Given the yard’s challenges, I’m constantly regulating the mower deck height to prevent dinging the dual blades.

I treat cutting the grass the way race car drivers treat the Daytona 500. I dispatch all the risks with skill, daring and speed.

So climbing into the big yellow seat finally let me feel manly behavior, an emotion that persisted even as I put on the big clunky ear muffs to protect my hearing so I can still enjoy “Mamma Mia” when I’m retired.

I turned the key in the ignition, eager to hear the behemoth rumble to life.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Again nothing.

Once more.

A clicking sound.

I was crestfallen. The whole operation was now in jeopardy.

Again.

More clicking.

This was disconcerting because it strikes at the core of my fears about being unmanly.

Because if this didn’t work, I’d have to go knock on Greg’s door for help, an exercise that always leaves me feeling small.

Greg builds interstate highways for a living. I feel manly driving a machine that goes by the name Deere, a moniker that sounds like an animal named Bambi.

He goes all over the country to drive million dollar machines that look like the ones that maneuver space shuttles around the launch pad.
I’ve never seen him without a lit, unfiltered Camel in either his mouth or his hand. I imagine him smoking in places like church and during dental procedures.

Calling him gruff trivializes gruffness. Andy Rooney is gruff. Greg is armed and gruff. He’s so gruff he makes Dick Cheney look as gentle and friendly as a neighborhood carpenter. Karen Carpenter.

He’s profane and has a tankful of hate.

He hates politicians, lawyers, golf and he really hates the people who used to own our house. The hatred’s never far from the surface.

I’ll give you an example but because I’ve vowed to make this a family friendly blog, I’m going to substitute various fruits for when he swears when talking about his old neighbor.

“That grape was the biggest peachy banana I’ve ever seen. A plum-sucking tangerine like that wouldn’t know his cantaloupe from a hole in the ground.”

I fear the day I shank a golf ball through one of his windows and he retaliates by firing a bazooka through my solar plexus.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I checked the oil. It looked oily. I pulled on some wires and checked some connections -- not because I knew what I was doing. I do that whenever it seems to make more sense than chanting something like, “Abracadabra!” or “Tuscarora!”

I’ve never felt the need to know how my John Deere works to love it. It’s the same with my family. I love them, but knowing that they have spleens or how a spleen works isn’t going to make me love them any more.

I tried again.

Nothing.

At this point, I don’t remember if I resorted to prayer. I may have. I know in this world of hurt and woe, it’s pathetic to pray for things like mechanical assistance so I don’t have to ask my scary neighbor for help to ensure I get to the bar to watch some young millionaire toss a baseball to another millionaire.

But it’s such a reflexive reaction I can only hope God has a spam filter that just sends my silly little prayers straight to his junk prayer file for convenient disposal.

Either way, on the seventh try, the mower came roaring to life in a great big gust of manly pollution.

The grass got cut and I settled into my bar stool in time to watch baseball history. And I spent the rest of the night relieved I didn’t have to ask Greg for help.

We get along great and as a neighbor he’s a lifesaver.

But I can’t help but wonder what he makes of me. He’s true blue collar, a salt of the earth kind of guy who doesn’t understand someone like me earning a living telling stories.

He probably thinks I’m some kind of fruit.

Victory lap in Mow-town

My wife approached with the same look of grave concern she bore when she told me the 18-year-old cat I couldn’t stand was about to die.

“I have bad news about the new garage door,” she said. “Actually, it’s double bad news. Which do you want to hear first? The bad news or the worse news?”

Like the impending 2008 death of Buster, the foul-breathed, weak-kidneyed cat I’d stopped caring about in 2002, I knew nothing she could tell me was going to ruin my day. We’d already dipped into the savings for the $1,100 and gave it to a reputable local guy. If there was a problem, I knew it was his problem, not mine.

I feigned fragile distress.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. “I’m not sure I can take any more bad news. Start with the lesser of two evils.”

“Well, the manufacturer shipped him the wrong parts. He didn’t realize it until he’d installed it. Now, we won’t be able to open it for two weeks.”

Of course, I was right. Summer’s in the air. The one-car garage won’t be needed to shield either of our vehicles from harsh blizzards. So this wasn’t bad news. It was barely inconvenient news.

I let my face fall into my hands and began shaking my head like someone told me a minty-smelling cat I really, really cared for was about to die.

“What could possibly be worse news than that?” I wailed.

“The lawn mower’s still in there. You won’t be able to cut the grass for two weeks.”

I love this woman. She’s a great wife and mother. So it would have been unfair for me to jump out of my big easy chair and start cart wheeling around the living room while singing “Celebration!” the 1980 cheesy wedding staple by funksters Kool & The Gang.

So I stood up and strode zombie-like to the door. “I’m going to the bar,” I said. “I need a drink.”

I dashed straight to The Pond, pulled open the door and yelled a triumphant, “I win!”

I know I can’t say this without sounding like the world’s worst father, but the euphoria I felt at that moment differed little from the two times I walked through that same door and told those same men, “It’s a girl!”

Every year, we have an informal pool to see who can go the longest without having to start mowing his lawn.

This is the time of the year all our lawns seem like they’re on steroids. Mow them once and we’re bound to be mowing them every five days. I know some men who are now mowing their lawns every three days.

That used to be me at our old house where we lived for 15 happy years. I loved that little house and was peacock proud the day we paid it off. But I knew in my heart that I didn’t own that house. It owned me.

It was in a traditional neighborhood with finicky neighbors slammed right up against our fenceless borders. That meant that if my anal retentive neighbor felt duty bound to cut his grass every four days or so, then I’d have to keep up the pace or the boundary would look like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. One side would be order and neatness while the other would be a shaggy sort of squalor.

It took about 90 minutes of grueling labor to push the old mower around all the trees, shrubs and week-old beer bottles I liked to leave around to give the place atmosphere.

Now, our new home is up a mountain deep in the lovely woods. Maybe a car an hour goes past at 50 mph. The shade from the trees stunts the scraggy patches of grass, as does the much higher elevation

So I’m now a strong contender for the last man to mow title. This puts me in a confrontational role with my buddy Paul who lives in similarly remote homestead. He goes so long into spring without mowing that his wife has lost dogs and small children in the deep, thick shag.

He was distraught when I told him my John Deere LA100 had become a ship in a bottle. He’d been confident he’d win and began griping I was cheating, it was unfair, blah, blah, blah.

Then he straightened up on his bar stool, got a glint in his eye and said he was going to try and hold out. He was serious, too.

It’s game on.

Of course, our wives think it’s ridiculous. They lament that if the men they’d married put as much thought and exertion into doing work as we do into getting out of work, they’d be married to titans of industry.

But we don’t care.

It’s just another boredom buster that gives us something about which to yap. Beats watching grass grow.