Mowed

There was a lot of grass on the Utopian Stringam homestead.

A lot.

And I mean the kind that doesn’t go up in smoke.

Or shouldn’t.

Anyways . . .

It needed to be mowed. Regularly.

Something I watched my older sister and brothers do millions of times.

Okay, it seemed like millions.

Have you gotten the idea I envied them?

Well, I did. 

Even though our mower wasn’t one of those swanky ride-on types that would have been . . . you know . . . fun, but was, instead the good old push type. Electric.

With a fifty-foot cord.

When I was nine, dad handed me the . . . umm . . . plugin, and told me to get to work.

My day had come!

His only advice: Avoid anything sharp and cutty, generally anything under the mower.

Oh, and start near the plug and work out from there.

I was a bit nervous, but for the first two passes, I did well.

Really well.

Then I forgot rule two.

Which led to forgetting rule one.

Sigh.

I decided I needed to backtrack.

An interesting thing about electric cords: They aren’t intuitive.

And never leap out of the way.

And when things sharp and cutty pass over them, they . . . erm . . . cut.

With varied and interesting results.

First, the mower quits.

Immediately.

And no amount of flipping the switch is going to turn that sucker back on.

Second, the two ends of the cord, one of which is spitting sparks, lie in the grass.

Another interesting note: If you take the two ends and try to force them together without first unplugging the live one, all sorts of pyrotechnics erupt. And the two ends don’t magically re-attach. Just FYI.

I survived. (I know you were concerned.) I then went to my father in tears and he accompanied me back to the scene of the crime and effected necessary repairs.

Tears forgotten, I was soon ‘back in the saddle again’.

Lessons learned.

Use Your Words is a writing challenge. 

Participating bloggers pick 4 - 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. 

That's the challenge. Here's a fun twist: no one who's participating knows who got their words and in what directions the writer will take them until the day and time that we all simultaneously publish our work.

This month, my words came from: My Brain on Kids. http://mybrainonkids.net                         

Work, Nervous, Nine, Utopian, Swanky

Fun? There's more...

Here are the other participants:

Baking In A Tornado http://www.bakinginatornado.com/2016/07/use-your-words-cocktails-hawks-and.html

Southern Belle Charm                    http://www.southernbellecharm.com                       

Not That Sarah Michelle                 http://notthatsarahmichelle.blogspot.com                   

Spatulas on Parade http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/2016/07/spiced-banana-honey-roasted-pecan-cake.html                       

Dinosaur Superhero Mommy            http://dinoheromommy.com/   

My Brain on Kids                           http://mybrainonkids.net

The Bergham Chronicles                  http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com

Never Ever Give Up Hope                http://batteredhope.blogspot.com

Confessions of a part time working mom     http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/   

The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver     http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html 

Molly Ritterbeck                              http://mollyritterbeck.com/   

Juicebox Confession                         http://juiceboxconfession.com/

Climaxed                                         http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com     

When I Grow Up                             http://kimberlyyavorski.com/whenigrowup/    

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo                      http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/