Don’t Mow

by Will Bailey

Try again.

Let ‘er rip. I’m not conducting a tuba band, or lighting cherry bombs, or about to do something very evil in an crowded elevator; I’m trying to mow the lawn. There’s just one problem: I can’t get this lawnmower started. No matter how hard or fast I pull on the starter cord, I’m not treated to so much as a putter, let alone a reeeeeaaaaarrrrrn or even a varoom. Sure, I tried fiddling with the thing and poking the other thing and kicking the third thing, but that’s getting me nowhere fast. Or should I say…”mowhere?” No, I shouldn’t. And neither should you. Because that’s the kind of pun that even your kooky uncle, you know the one, Uncle Loosecannon, would think is lame. Back to lawn mowers, and How Not To Start Them: if this were a college course I’d be getting an A+! I’d go on to graduate summa cum laude in Undergraduate Lawnmower Incompetence, and maybe even start my own non-operational lawnmower manufacturing company, “Yawnmowers USA.” We’d buy and sell the best non-working lawnmowers the landscaping industry has ever seen. Soon, every one of our happily frustrated customers would have forearms the size of tree trunks, thanks to all the endless yanking of starter cords that aren’t actually attached to anything. Come to think of it, we should patent this Phantom Starter Cord technology to be used on other appliances that people often take for granted. Want to watch reality television? Here, yank on this starter cord for a solid ten minutes. If you still want to watch after all that physical exertion, guess what? You’ve earned it. Here’s the remote. Go nuts.

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