6 Tips on Mowing the Lawn

I have decided to share some wisdom on lawnmowing that I have learned in my time.

1) Unless you spend about a million dollars, they're all cursed. And the million dollar ones are probably all cursed, too, I just don't have experiences with mowers of that price range.

2) Don't lie to yourself. You will be thwarted. You will be pwnd before the lawn gets mwnd. <--definitely invented that one.

3) While you are being pwnd, you may find a temporary high in exhibiting displays of rage--kicking the lawnmower, using words that require all symbols to type and that would cause your mother to throw you out of a moving vehicle if you said them in the car, etc. But it's really freaking the neighbors out, and besides, you need all that energy you're devoting to telling your lawn mower exactly where it can go and what painful surgeries you're going to perform on it. Why?

4) Because you need to spend precious moments of your summer not drinking tea, not swimming, not setting off fireworks, but pulling that goddamn starter cord. And that noise? It's not the motor trying to start. It's the mower laughing at your naive optimism in thinking it will fire up in fewer than 16 yanks. It is also making bets, telepathically, with other neighborhood lawnmowers on how long it takes before you are reduced to tears, begging the mower to just, please, just start, lavishing praise on all its lawnmowing glory, attempting to be one with the mower.

5) And stop talking to the mower. A few expletives here and there are understandable. But when you speak directly to your mower, saying, "You know, it is quite possible that I am beginning to hate you even more than the last mower," you will look up to find your neighbor no longer pretending to water his lawn, but staring at you with his mouth open because you are talking to a very inanimate object. It doesn't matter that the only reason you are talking to it is because it is currently inanimate.

6) There is only one option. You must set your jaw, and prepare to spend 2-3 times as long as you think will be necessary, and start and restart that infernal machine as many times as it takes to get the lawn mowed. Only consistent persistence will prevail.

Good luck.