A Pain in the Grass

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

So it’s finally happened, like a dream come true—the dream of every father whose spawn comes out with the stem on the apple:

My son is big and old enough to help cutting the grass.

I remember when I was old enough to help my father with the grass. It was a different time then, with different tools. I was out there with my dad, using a hand-trimmer—that’s right, boys and girls, no gasoline or electrical cords, I was down on my little hands and knees with what amounts to a pair of scissors, making my way around the bottom of the fence—when my father asked me to give the mower a try. This was a proud moment for me, one of those “today, I am a man,” moments, since if he wanted me to try the lawn mower, my father must have thought I was big enough to push the damn thing.

Oh, I know there are some younger folks out there thinking I mean I just had to drag the machine around because the motor only drove the blade, not the wheels, but I’m even older than that. This was a push mower, no motor involved. The blade was driven by gears attached to the wheels, and the wheels only moved if I got the thing rolling, and back then,

Who needs a gym?

though we did have plastic, we didn’t trust it. We had fiberglass, too, but that was for Commies and boats (yeah, I don’t get the connection either), so this machine was made of  bolted-together cast iron, and weighed almost as much as I did. But I was game. I stepped up to that iron age grass cutter, gripped the handle, and threw my weight into the thing, straining my mighty thews . . . okay, back then I had maybe one thew, and a small one at that, but I strained the hell out of it, and got the mower moving.  I cut a row alongside the row my father had already cut, humps in the ground and tussocks of grass sending the mower swerving this way and that, while I concentrated on just keeping the damn thing moving.

When I reached the end of the row, I let the mower bump to a halt and turned to survey what I’d done. There, next to my father’s nice, straight row, was a path across the lawn akin to the skidmarks left behind after a really bad car crash, when the driver had lots of time to stop, but not the ability. There were graceful curves. There were sudden right angle turns. There was even a figure nine—it would have been a figure eight, but a low spot in the yard kept me from completing one loop. I turned to where my father had watched the entire process, my little heart heavy, anticipating—dreading—his disapproval. But he wasn’t there.

Where he had stood hung a dust cloud, like a silhouette of smoke, just like I saw every Saturday morning when the Coyote chased the Road Runner. Drifting on the wind came my father's faint voice, a message sent winging my way as Dad ran for the hills . . . or possibly the television. “Come in when you’re done, and try not to miss any spots!” I turned back to the mower and started jockeying it into position to take another winding swipe out of the lawn, because on that day I’d taken a great step on my way to becoming a man.

A very stupid man.

That was then; this is now. Today would be a vastly different experience, because I was on the other side of it. But I wouldn’t abuse my fatherly power, and have the boy mow the whole yard. The yard at Handsome’s house isn’t like the yard I had growing up. That yard was flat, and relatively level, with just a house and fence to trim. Though the tools are different now, the technology better, with all its electrical cords and gasoline, the yard at the house today has hills. Barely any of it is actually flat and portions of it are fairly steep—and for trimming, there is the house and fence, as when I was a boy, but there is also a rock wall, trees, a stump, a shed, another rock wall, the driveway, another rock wall, stairs, another hill . . . it is not the same job I had as a boy.

So I gave my son a choice: gas-powered mower or electric trimmer. Either way, he was doing half the job. He chose the trimmer and got to work. I strode up and down the various yards around the house—front, side, upper back, lower back—carving paths through the grass as straight and true as I remember my father’s being those many years ago, while Handsome buzzed along fences, walls, and foundations with a speed and ease I’d only dreamed about as a boy his age.

Just as I was finishing the upper back yard, he appeared beside me, trimmer in hand. “It’s out of line,” he said. “But I think I’m done anyway.” He flipped a hand toward various parts of the property, a finger pointing almost too fast to see. “I got over there, and there, and there and there and down there. So,”—he raised an eyebrow—“can I go?”

I was looking at the trimmer, having taken it and flipped it over to check the cutting line feed. I’d popped it open while he talked, and, sure enough, it was empty. “I guess,” I said, pushing the feeder head closed once more. “But why don’t you—”

I looked up to find I was talking to a strangely familiar cloud of dust, like a boy shaped from smoke. I peered about the yard, but he was gone; this time, not even words hung in the air to explain the disappearance.

I shrugged and carried the trimmer into the garage to refill the line feeder. While I was winding the cutting string onto the spool, I noticed a tall tuft of grass, sticking up from a spot along the top of the retaining wall like a stubborn cowlick. When I’d filled the feeder and snapped the trimmer head back together, I went and cut off that cowlick. On the way over to it I spotted another. On the way to that second one, I spotted a third. Then a fourth. Just to be sure, I buzzed along the top of the retaining wall, making sure to get every remaining blade of grass. The wall led me to a tree whose base needed doing. Beyond the tree was a low wall with a few stalks he’d missed. This led me to the house. Which led me to the fence.

I was actually working on the third rock wall when I realized I’d done nearly all the trimming over again—in some cases for the first time that day—while once again, someone had run for the hills. Or, and in this case it was much more likely, the television. A passer-by at that moment might have heard the words “Son of a bitch!” roll out across the lawn, as I realized that my dream hadn’t come true. Instead, I’d simply taken, at forty-six, yet another step on my road to becoming a man.

A very stupid man.

Some things don’t change.

Where can I get a dust cloud?

Talk to you later!

Forty-Six-And-A-Half

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

I’m forty-six years old. Going on forty-seven. I know you already understand the progression, but that’s my bid to stay youthful, like when I used to say things such as, “I’m thirteen, going on fourteen.” But it’s not the same. Back then it was kind of cute, and something all kids my age were doing, but now it’s just a little sad. I know it’s sad, and I know you know it, but I just can’t help it. Not to worry, though: soon I’ll be saying things like “I’m forty-seven and a half,” or “I’m fifty and a quarter.” Then you can really shake your heads. Does the tooth-fairy accept dentures? I’m going to have to look into that—that could be worth some money, in my retirement.

But anyway, the point is I’m getting older. I understand it—my brain comprehends it as a logical fact—but I don’t accept it. Not in my heart. Through my ears my brain hears the terrible creaking and crackling coming from my arthritic knee; it sounds like someone massaging a wad of Saran Wrap. Through my nose my brain detects the strangely burning scent of whatever the Christ liniment the physical therapist was rubbing on my arm last year, when I developed tennis elbow . . . without ever actually playing tennis. Or any other sport. Through my eyes, my brain sees the ever-growing number of gray hairs invading my beard—once just one or two, it soon became a sprinkling; now the sides are about even, and the tide is about to turn, and someday soon my brain will use my eyes to watch the colored portion of my facial hair turn and run in an all-out rout.

My heart, however, acknowledges none of this. My heart still tells me things like, “Oh, sure, you can carry all three flats of bottled water in one trip,” or, “Yes that does look like a lot of mail, but you can deliver all that in eight hours,” or, “Yup, damn, that is a big, steep hill. You should run up it!” And then, when I get to the top of the hill, and I’m bent over to catch my breath, dizzy, and my heart’s beating like Buddy Rich playing a snare solo, and my brain gives it the old “I told you so,” my heart’s still giving my brain the finger and saying “. . . beat-beat—I’ll—beat-beat—be—beat-beat—fine . . .”

So the other day, when I noticed—several times—the soft, pudgy roll I’m developing about my midsection, my brain was instantly depressed, and one step closer to telling people I’m forty-six-and-a-half. My heart, though, forked a couple of fingers in my brain’s direction and said, “Looks like we’re going running!”

There was an argument. My brain trotted out all kinds of evidence: my birth certificate, the wrinkles on my face, the fact that the retired folks I deliver the mail to don’t really look all that old to me any more. My brain called witnesses, like my acid reflux, my no-excuse bad elbow, and my strangely talkative knee. The knee, I thought, made some solid points, things like pain. And pain. And then pulled out all the stops and pointed out pain.

My heart just waved a breezy hand in the face of all this, gaily calling out “Poppycock!”

Yeah, sometimes my heart’s a douche like that.

“A compromise!” my brain said, giving up on trying to calculate the cost of the coffin I’d need if I dropped dead of a Buddy Richian heart attack after limping a mile or two from

home. “Hoops. See if the boy will go play some basketball. We can spend some quality time with our son, plus there will be a car right there, and someone to call the ambulance when we go toes up.”

“Hmm . . .” said my heart. “That actually sounds like fun. But he’ll never say yes.”

“He might,” urged my brain, though privately thinking the heart was right. Let’s face it: in an effort to one day be able to say it was fifty-one-and-a-sixth, my gray matter was grasping at straws. “I’ll ask him.”

The text went out, and a reply came back a few minutes later. My brain turned away from what it was doing—quietly trying to figure out how to trick my heart into believing that taking a nice refreshing nap was just like going for a run—and picked up my phone to read the reply.

“Son of a bitch, he said yes,” said my brain.

“Booya!” said my heart.

“Crinkle-crunch-crikkk,” said my knee.

So that was how I wound up pounding around beneath the basketball hoop behind the elementary school in the neighborhood. Let me just lead off by saying it was a lot easier to play basketball against my son when I was a foot taller than him. Even a half a foot. Let me also lead off by saying we are now pretty evenly matched (meaning each of us cheats about as much as the other), and that if the two of us had the time to practice for a few hours every day, just like the professionals, then one day, maybe, we could suck. As it stands now, actually sucking at basketball is a distant dream for us, something glimpsed on the horizon: something to aspire to.

We were currently tossing the bouncy-rubbery thing back and forth—the ball, I think it’s called—occasionally lofting the “ball” toward the “basket.” The lofting was followed by much audible prayer, asking God to please reach down and guide the brown, flying orb through the hoop, or at least, for the love of Himself, into the backboard, so we wouldn’t have to go

fetch the ball from the field. God, it seemed, was busy that day. Possibly He is a sports fan, and was disgusted at what we were doing to His beloved game of basketball, so had turned His attention to watching sparrows fall, or something. At least, I hope He was doing that, and that the Lord of Creation was not hiding His mouth with one hand while pointing at me with the other, laughing as I, yet again, ran out into the field to retrieve the ball.

And yes, I was running. Unlike my son, who, toward the end of a summer spent sleeping until noon every chance he got, under the umbrella of “Hey, man, it’s summer vacation,” was strolling about the court, I was galloping around like an energetic clown at Cirque du Soleil. We’d played a game called “Pig,” which is just like the game called “Horse,” but shorter, because did I mention we suck? Now I was merely fetching the ball, lofting it, then fetching it again, as the boy watched and laughed. I mainly just clutched the ball and ran. I understand you’re supposed to dribble while playing basketball, so every once in a while I gave that a try, though I’d always quit and wipe my lip dry before things got too embarrassing.

Then I discovered that if I was close enough to the basket, I could throw the ball up there, actually hit the backboard, then run over and catch it again when it came down on the other side of the hoop. Well, this was a grand improvement over having to run out into the field, so I kept at it, running a continuous figure eight before the hoop, shooting from the left, then the right, then the left again, always catching the ball as it came down, shouting “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” as my son stood there, gawping and laughing at me. To be fair, I’m pretty sure my brain had stopped receiving oxygen about ten seconds before I made this discovery, which might explain my slight delirium.

I’d run the circuit about six or eight times when I heard a passing woman talking to her young daughter. “Look at that boy, spending time playing with that special needs man. See how much fun the man is having? What a nice boy.”

As they walked on, my oxygen-starved brain did a double-take at this, made a fast executive decision, and sent a quick message. My legs received this message and immediately went on strike. The ball bounced, unattended, across the court, as I did a slow somersault, winding up as predicted fourteen paragraphs ago, lying toes up in the middle of the court. My heart was apparently practicing its speed-metal double-bass routine, but took the time to urge me back to my feet and into the fray once more. I ignored it. A mob, the likes of which has not been seen since the villagers chased Frankenstein’s monster into the windmill, rolled over my heart. Comprised of my brain, knee, elbow, lungs, legs, spleen, and a whole bunch of bit players from my body, fully equipped with torches, pitchforks, baseball bats, bits of wood with nails driven through, and, in the case of my pancreas, a rusty old bicycle chain, this mob proceeded to beat the shit out of my heart as I lay there contemplating the sweet release of death. The roll about my middle, despite the seeming anatomical impossibility of the feat, kicked my heart in the balls. Twice.

My son’s grinning face suddenly loomed above me, blocking the direct path up to Heaven I was hoping to follow. “Are you okay?” he said, but I didn’t answer. I was busy looking at his wide, white smile, and wondering: Would the tooth-fairy accept someone else’s teeth from beneath my pillow, or do they have to be my own? I’m going to have to look into that—that could be worth some money, in my retirement.

I recovered, obviously, but it did take some time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go buy a new pillow, and some good, strong pliers.

Talk to you later!


P.S. - My heart has also recovered, and wants to know if anyone wants to go for a jog?

. . . dammit.

The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe - The Conclusion

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

This is the conclusion of a two-part story. If you haven't yet read the beginning, I suggest you back up a day and read The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe—the rest of this will make more sense.

**************************************

Leaving the woman to try to collect the curious canines, I ran across the street to alert the pet owners that they seemed to have lost control of the situation. I let myself into their gated yard, then found myself confronted with an interior kind of “kid corral,” fenced-in area, with a tiny swing set (complete with little slide) surrounded by a knee-high fence. I stepped over the toddler/ankle-biting dog barrier and went up the stairs to the front porch . . . where I found the house unlocked and open, the front door propped wide by a couple of logs of firewood. The huge plasma TV was still on, as was the fantastic stereo, pumping quiet music into the air of the empty house. I rang the bell.

No answer.

I knocked on the open door.

No answer.

I called out “Hello!”

You can guess, right? Yup: no answer.

I began patting myself down, looking for a pen and paper with which to leave a note. I came up with three choices of message: “I have your dogs, they’re safe, come get them;” “I have your dogs, if you ever want to see them again you’ll bring cash;” and the short, but sweet, “Thanks for the TV and stereo, dudes!” Realizing the woman across the street would see me ferrying entertainment electronics down the street to my house, I gave up on the whole note idea.

I also didn’t have a pen.

I got back to the gate out to the street just as across-the-street lady was coaxing the runaways back to the proper side of the street, shaking my box of Milk Bones and judiciously

applying the word “treat” at strategic moments. The yorkie was trotting along just as happy as all get out, but the shih tzu apparently saw through the ruse. She lay down out by the street and refused to move again, no matter how hard across-the-street lady rattled that box. Eventually the woman  simply picked up the recalcitrant canine and carried her into the yard.

The whole time, the shih tzu stared at me with an expression communicating just how undignified she found the whole “picking her up” thing, and that somehow it all my fault.

*Sigh*

So we put them in the yard, and I started to follow them in toward the house, intending to let them into the kid/pet corral . . . but when I got there I saw there was no gate. I’d just stepped over the thing when I went up to ring the bell, and hadn’t even noticed. I looked at the dogs, quick-stepping about the yard like small dogs do, and shrugged. They were home, I’d done my good deed. I was done. I started to head for home.

As I went out through the gate, across-the-street lady was talking to one of the neighbors who happened to be driving by, leaning on the car roof to lean in the driver’s window.

“Well, they’re home,” I said.

“Did you put them in the little yard?”

“Uh . . .”

“Because they usually keep them in that little yard, with the swings.”

Crap. My good deed was not done. I turned around to head back into the yard . . . and the shih tzu passed me going the other way, trotting along the top of the wall with the same “I don’t care” attitude she’d shown crossing the busy street.

“Where the hell are you going?” I said.

She just turned her head away as she kept walking, the doggy equivalent of flipping me the bird.

“Right!” I said. “The little yard it is.”

Across-the-street lady had done such a good job with her highness, mistress Shih Tzu the first time, I conscripted her again. She started herding the little dog back into the yard while

This is the most savage
yorkie pic I could find!

I went back in to look for the littler dog. I found the yorkie in the corner of the yard: apparently a leaf had made a suspicious move, and the tiny terror was busy barking the detritus into submission. Though the little beast couldn’t be heard from more than five feet away, I gave her an A for effort. Then I started dismantling the little fence.

It sounds worse than it was. All I really did was pull one of the connecting rods out of a panel join and made a gate; I mean really, who the hell fences off a part of their yard without putting in a gate? This was not my fault.

Across-the-street lady arrived with the shih tzu in tow, and we hustled the two of them into the safety of their little yard. Then across-the-street stood guard as I put the fence back together—though, as always, taking it apart had been a lot easier. I had just about gotten it back together when I looked past across-the-street lady to see the savage yorkie trotting along the top of yet another wall, apparently intending to reestablish her conflict with the leaf.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

I followed the wall back, and found its end abutted the front stairs, nicely level with one of the steps about halfway up, providing a kind of doggy highway out of the inner yard and right over to where they could pick up the wall that led straight out to the street. I looked about the yard, taking in the useless inner and outer fences, and the gates that were impediments only to people, and didn’t slow the pets at all.

“What are these people,” I said to across-the-street lady, “idiots?”

“Yes,” she replied, nodding sadly. “Yes they are.”

I scooped up the yorkie, braving her threatening squeaks and almost-barks, and plopped her in the inner yard. I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, the dogs following along as if it were all a game. “Treats,” I lied, pointing into the house. “They’re in there!” The dogs galloped through the door, on the hunt for the elusive goodies. I waved sadly at the stereo, its lights still winking at me enticingly, booted the firewood out of the way, and slammed the door behind them.

I hot-footed it back to the street, not looking back for fear of seeing a knotted bedsheet hanging from a window with a small canine form already halfway down; at that point, I wouldn’t have put it past them. I exchanged quick pleasantries with across-the-street lady, just trying to get the hell out of there before something else went wrong. My stomach had started making noise, reminding me that I’d last seen that pot-o-pasta sitting on the stove more than an hour earlier, and I was still damn hungry. I jogged back down the hill, around to the front of my house and right in through the open garage, closing the big door behind me. I went straight into the house through the laundry room—and promptly slipped in the pile of “fertilizer” still sitting in the middle of the floor.

“Son of a bitch!”

The spaghetti was quite cold by the time I got to it.

And that's the story of The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe. 

Talk to you later!

The Shih Tzu Shih Tshoe Shtory

Greetings, WYMOP fans!

I'm writing this late at night, and not certain I'll finish before Monday is over, so be prepared for a sudden stop, and please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times.

*************************************

I was working in the back yard yesterday, replacing the fence used to keep in the three small dogs currently living with my son. These three dogs are wonderful gardeners and landscapers, apparently: nowhere on my property is there grass any greener than that in the dogs’ yard. It’s green, and thick, and lush and . . . well fertilized. Very well fertilized. On a daily basis. From three dogs.

So, by the time I was done working for the day, my boots were fairly well covered with, uh, dog fertilizer. Pounds of it. I put my tools away up in the shed behind the house, and all I had left to do was bring the shop-vac in through the back door and down into the garage before it was pasta time. I could see the spaghetti pot sitting on the stove through the sliding glass door, and I was hungry. I kicked off my boots at the edge of the back deck so as not to track ‘fertilizer’ all over the house—no socks, why wreck ‘em like that—scooped up my big old shop-vac, went in the house and headed downstairs to put the vac away. I headed straight into the laundry room without hesitation, knowing the motion-sensor would kick the lights on after a stride or two, just thinking about that pot-o-pasta waiting for me in the kitchen.

Thinking about it, that is, until my bare foot came down on a squishy, pungent lump of ‘fertilizer’ one of the dogs had left on the laundry room floor.

Now, I have been happy before. I have been joyous and beaming. I have been frothing and overflowing with cheer. Right then, though, I was not beaming. I was not joyous. And though I was frothing, it was not with cheer.

I was not happy.

I nearly went Super Saiyan.

I tromped through the laundry room and into the garage like an angry Fred Flintstone, grumbling and barefoot, dropped off the shop-vac, and headed right out to the front yard so I could wipe that foot clean. I was in the front yard, practically moonwalking about the place in an effort to clean my sole, when traffic in the street beside me slowed, then stopped.

Jeeze, I thought. I’m good, but I’m not that good. For the sake of the crowd, however, I threw a couple of pirouettes into my anti-fertilizer dance routine. Give the crowd what they like, is what I always say.

That’s when I saw the small dog, a very ladylike little Shih Tzu, strolling across the street,

holding up cars in both directions without a care. Not hustling across, or scooting for the safety of the sidewalk, like most nervous, little dogs,but walking along with that “I don’t care” attitude normally reserved for cats, and postal supervisors.

She was obviously unaccustomed to traffic, and was going to get killed.

Judging my foot to be fertilizer free enough, I dashed into the house to slam my tender toes into my sandals before running across the yard and down to the street, a box of Milk Bones for small dogs in hand, preparing to bribe the little poochie princess to my side.

She was nowhere to be seen.

A neighbor across the street leaned out her front door, pointing up the hill beside my house, shouting something that sounded, over the renewed traffic noise, like “Jaa raa bookie da-daa!” I got the gist, and ran uphill, Milk Bones box rattling in my hand. I was about halfway up the hill when she turned and saw me, and began to cuss me out, in her little doggy way, for daring to follow along after her. She had gotten through “who the hell do you think you are,” and “what the hell do you think you’re doing,” and was just getting into “ . . . and you can just turn yourself around and walk on ho—” when she was interrupted by her little friend.

And I do mean little. The Yorkshire Terrier that bounded spasmodically across a nearby lawn

looked like something you got with a Happy Meal. I’d say she was small enough to fit in my hand, but my hands are too big. She’d have fit into my sister’s hands. If you’re reading this, and you’re a woman of average height or less, hold out your hand, cupping the palm. Now imagine a dog small enough to sit comfortably in there. That was what came sproinging across the grass, huffing little breathless barks at me, like someone in the last stages of emphysema who's just heard a good joke.

Well, small and smaller headed out into the neighborhood, staying just ahead of me and eschewing the biscuits I was offering. I followed them across the street and into a yard, where they seemed to settle down as if they owned the place. When a woman came out to ask what the hell I was doing in her yard, I countered with “Are these yours?” indicating the sprawled wanderers. They were not, but she did have news: they belonged to the people across the street, the house where Shih Tzu the entitled had collected Yorkie the not-so massive.

Leaving her to try to collect the curious canines, I ran across the street to alert the pet owners that they seemed to have lost control of the situation . . .


. . . and that's where I'll have to slap a big old To Be Continued. It's late, and it's a cute dog story. I want to do it justice, but I'm going to bed. The good news for you is I'll finish it tomorrow. Look at that! Two blogs this week for the price of one.

Talk to you tomorrow!