It's Pronounced Frankensteen!

Greetings, WYMOP readers!

Yes, another late post, but this time it wasn’t simply that I forgot, I swear. There was a bit of important family stuff happening, and posting my blog just got squeezed out. Not to worry, though—I got this thing out just as soon as I could. And now . . .

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The lawnmower was dead.

It was fine when I tucked it in for the winter, I swear to God—but then, when I went to break it out last week, it just wouldn’t wake up. Not even a sputter. Not a spark. Doornails would look at my lawnmower and say, “Dude, you are so dead!” Disco was looking at my lawnmower and feeling superior.

I mean, this thing was dead.

But I’m a follower of the esoteric. I’m a fan of secret knowledge. I’m a seeker of the unknown and a student of things man was not meant to know. I delved into dark tomes, and sought out truths God had hidden from man since the beginning of time. I found my way to the greatest repository of the bizarre and arcane, the largest collection of the unfathomable the world has ever seen!

That’s right: I logged into YouTube.

A couple of videos later I believed I had diagnosed the problem and was ready to operate—but I would need parts: one part in particular. But where would I get this part, the heart of my dead machine? For that was what I had to replace: the heart of the mower, its source, its very spark of life! I would have to find it a new heart, maybe one from a different lawnmower, and put it into this cold, Toro corpse. I would cobble together a patchwork monster to stand by my side and help me cut the rising grasses beneath its whirling blade! I removed the failed organ, tore it loose from its foundations within the body, and went looking for a replacement.

“Hi, welcome to Maestranzi Brothers. Can I help you?”

“God, I hope so. What I really need is one of these”—I held up the lifeless ignition coil by its spark plug wire like I was holding a rat by its tail—“but one that works.”

“Do you have a part number? Or maybe the model number on your machine?”

“I didn’t think I needed that stuff, since I brought in this.” I waggled the beatless heart at him, thinking of all the idiot drivers (i.e., not me) I’d just battled my way through (there were backups on Route 128) and hoping to see a glimmer of yes in his eyes.

“No,” he said, the stone cold bastard. “We can’t really tell a lot from that. We just need the model number from the back of your machine.”

“I see,” I said, then whirled and lurched, weeping, out into the storm . . . of cars. It was actually a beautiful, sunny day, though traffic was a bitch. I copied the model number from my cold and lifeless Toro and fought my way through the swelling tide of vehicles on the road—rush hour was fast approaching—and returned to my small engine resurrection man.

When I finally stumbled out of his lair, it was with a new heart . . . excuse me, part in hand, one smaller and more efficient than the one that had so recently given up the ghost. I got in my Mini and drove through the pouring sunshine—look, the damn weather really isn’t helping me set the tone I’m going for here—to my house, and carried my prize out back to the shed, where a dead thing waited for new life. Choosing my instruments carefully, looking about to ensure I wasn’t being observed, I got to work.

The feel of this post has been a direct result of my pulling the starter cord that afternoon, and while the old Toro sputtered, coughed, and then roared, staggering about as if drunk and screaming “It’s alive! It’s alive! Alive! Alive!” before throwing back my head and laughing maniacally up into the warm spring sky. Another direct result may be the For Sale sign now planted in the front lawn of the house next door.

Some people. No sense of humor.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go cut the grass.

Talk to you later!