Ah, the Sweet Smell of Cut Grass (Please Kill Me)

I saw the season's first cut grass this morning. Ugh. Summer's coming.

When I was a kid I swore my dad had my brother and I just so we could cut the grass. I guess we had maybe an acre of grass to cut, maybe a little less. Though when you're 7 years old and can barely reach the handle to start pushing, it seems like 100 acres. With woods. And an orange bear in a red sweater and no pants that can talk. Wait...what the fuck was I talking about? Ah yes. The grass. We split the cutting duties and stuck with that for about 10 years - I did the front yard and the sides, and he did the backyard. Looking back now, I wonder if my dad had me do the front because it was the part that was visible from the road? Was there a moment he thought "You know what...the front yard? I need to put my best man on it. Brothatime's good, he's real good...but is he ready for The Show? Better have Xmastime do the front." Of course, looking back my father also tried to convince me to drop out of the 11th grade and join the Army, so maybe he wasn't really making the best decisions he could have at the time.

Upon immediate perusal it would appear that my brother got the raw end of the deal, since the backyard was about twice as big as the front yard and featured a maybe 80 square foot patch of grass over the septic tank that grew oh, about 5 feet high every week. Looking back (again), and thinking about what helps grass grow so well...how well-sealed was this fucking septic tank underground? What the fuck? We played football on that shit!!!! Hopefully not literally. Anyways. In actuality my part of the cutting sucked more cause while the front yard was a nice, easy rectangle, the sides were a pain in the ass. Had to squeeze in between flowerbeds, rake away old pine needles etc etc. Sucked. The worst was I had to take the fucking clippers (my dad denied the existence of the Weedwhacker, of course) and, on my hands and knees, receive another man. No no no; I had to crawl around the house doing the snippity-snip on the blades of grass the lawn mower couldn't get that close to the house to cut. Miserable. Side note - nothing you wanna see invented, are they? "Fucking clippers"? The only things I wanna see in the boudouire that are long and hard enough to cut something are my girl's pencil erasers, flush with excitement upon seeing she was about to get all Winehouse on my luggage, know what I'm saying?

We'd cut the grass once a week. I don't know how he arranged it, but every time my dad would be leaving for work and say "make sure the grass gets cut today" God would overhear him and make sure the temperature outside went up to a nice, crispy 175 degrees. God forbid if there was a drop of water in my body by the time I was done. I'd start with the front yard, then the side on the east, then the west side by the house, then across the driveway, then come in and guzzle a gallon of water and tell Brothatime! it's his turn, have fun cutting the back, fuckface! and collapse in a heap of my own sweat. Of course, the whole thing was maybe 45 minutes, and I was at all times in peak physical condition; but something about having to do work always made it seem hotter, n'est-pas? If you had told me to go outside and play basketball for 6 hours in the heat I would've been fine. But cut the grass? I'd barely make it through each time before collapsing like a souffle next to Rosie O'Donnell's hopscotch practice pad; my dramatics, I'm sure, were quite Oscar-worthy.

And luckily our dad made things tougher on us by having us use a lawnmower left over from the Coolidge Adminsitration. Fucker had to weight 150 lbs, I think the wheels were actually square, was completely covered in oil and sometimes would actually start. This thing was so old it wasn't a John Deere, it was a John Fawne. I will now pause typing while you catch your breath from laughing. Okay. You'd hafta fucking yank the cord and then stand there as it wouldn't start. Foot on the base of the mower, pull again, nothing. Try again. It would be at this time that by law one of our neighbors would have to look over from his yard and yell "you're gonna flood it!!" while whizzing around on his riding mower that had a fan, a radio and a deep fryer sizzling away with baby egg rolls and pizza bites. Thanks, asshole! Eventually Brothertime! and I would find ourselves standing over the goddam thing, giving each other advice on how to get it started. "Well, take that nail over there, hold it against the sparkplug, and try starting it while I swirl the gas around the tank with this screwdriver..." You'd wonder why your urine was red for the next few days, but damned if the thing wouldn't start. Meanwhile, a week wouldn't go by without us imploring our dad to buy a riding mower. "What do I need a riding mower for?" he'd say honestly perplexed, "I've got you boys for that." Sigh. Touching, father!! We love you too!!!!!!!!!

The first cut of the season was always the best, cause with the first fruitless, futile non-working pull on the starting cord you could let yourself dream for a split second "it's dead!! the fucker's finally dead!! we'll hafta get a new one!!" during which you would prepare to pull out the charts and graphs you had prepared to show my dad how much better off he'd be getting a riding lawnmower "...if you look, the dollar to grass cut ratio goes up 34.6% over the first quarter..." You'd let yourself step back with relief and say to the mower "guess what? ain't cutting grass today, fucker!!! More time for me to practice my Pyraminx!!" Of course then dad would walk up (first cut was always on Saturday, so he could be home for this particular "ceremony"), give the thing a yank and it would immediately start up. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. It's like the goddam thing KNEW it was my dad, lighting up like the computer in WarGames when it thinks that Prof Falcon is in the hizzee. As the mower would start up with a sound that was like a jet crashing into another jet during a Who concert but louder, my dad would give us a look of "fucking pussies" and start pushing. Now, this is another mental delusion we would allow oursleves every fucking year; as my dad was pushing the mower across the yard my brother and I would look at each other with raised eyebrows, thinking "is this finally the year dad cuts the grass, and not us?!?!" Actually I was thinking that; my brother was probably thinking "if the words 'enumerably infinite' mean 'countable using integers perhaps extending to infinity' then does that include imperfect integers..." Fool's gold thinking on my part of course; just like that moment you're thinking "ooooohhh...is she gonna let me put it in THERE??" we'd be snapped back into reality by my dad, now about 30 yards away, standing at the mower beckoning me to come with his index finger. He'd make exactly one swath, not even bothering to cut another swath and thereby bringing the mower back to me. So it's bad enough I have to use this monstrosity to cut grass for the next hour, but now I have to go FETCH the fucking thing. Christ. This scene was like clockwork, every year.

EPILOGUE: the first time I called home after I got to college I was talking to my mother and asked where dad was. "Oh, outside cutting the grass on the new riding mower, hold on I'll go get him."

Sigh.