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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner : An ode to the stages of the lawn mowing

Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

With apologies to Shakespeare, who wrote the timeless “Seven Ages of Man” speech, I hereby present my time-killing “Seven Ages of Lawn Mowing” soliloquy:

The First Stage is the toy lawn mower stage, in which the eager young whelp makes engine noises with his mouth as he wheels his plastic Fisher-Price around the yard. The little tyke dreams of that glorious day in which he, too, will grow big enough to steer a deafening, smelly, dangerous object in circles around his lawn and frighten his pets. Yet the little nipper’s dreams must be deferred at least until he can reach the handle without a booster chair.

The Second Stage is that happy period in which the little fella proudly graduates into mowerhood. This is known, anthropologically, as the Lawn Boy period. (There are also, of course, Lawn Girls, but we’ll save that discussion for a love sonnet).

With any luck, the Lawn Boy successfully completes his first circuit of the yard without amputating any of his own key appendages or shearing the dog like a spring sheep. The Lawn Boy revels in his newfound mowerhood for several years, especially when he discovers he can mow the elderly neighbor’s yard, thus earning extra cash to purchase illegal fireworks. This period is notorious for being ephemeral and fleeting, soon descending with a crash into …

The Third Stage, which is known as the Sullenly Forced to Mow the Lawn All the Time Instead of, Like, Watch TV Stage. This phase usually hits hardest in the teen years, which are, ironically, the years in which a young man has the most lawn mowing strength and stamina. Yet through some odd combination of hormones, biology and innate obnoxiousness, the young man considers lawn mowing to be an exhausting and intolerable form of slavery imposed by a cruel and repressive world.

The Fourth Stage is, for many men, the happiest of lawn mowing stages because they don’t have any stupid lawn to mow. They are in college, or in the military, or in an apartment, or in prison, and thus have no yard maintenance chores. They can channel all of that pent-up lawn mowing energy into more important things, such as climbing mountains, attending boot camp, drinking in bars, forming sensitive indie-rock bands or walking around shirtless at NASCAR races. They must enjoy it while they can because they are about to run headlong into the longest and most soul-killing phase of all …

The Fifth Stage, also known as the Endless Drudgery Stage. This begins when a man purchases or rents his first house and then it persists and persists and persists for what seems like 50 years but is usually a mere 40.

Sure, there will be some brief respites. If he has children, Lawn Guy will enjoy a few years of forcing his little Lawn Boys and Girls to do all of the mowing. Yet he will be shocked and depressed at how quickly those years pass. His children will flee their grassy nest and Lawn Guy will be back out there, week after inexorable week, laboring away at a task not unlike that of Sisyphus, who was sentenced to forever roll a stone uphill, although Sisyphus never had to dispose of clippings.

This stage is so monotonous, it’s like watching grass grow.

Eventually, he comes to the Sixth Stage, when a man is either rich enough or exhausted enough to hire someone else to shoulder his lawn mowing burden. He hires either an eager Stage Two Lawn Boy, or he hires a lawn service. This Sixth Stage is actually the most bittersweet of all stages: He has the satisfaction of sitting on his butt all weekend and watching televised golf; yet somehow, as he watches strangers mowing his lawn, he feels just slightly less of a man.

Yeah, but he gets over it.

And then, like a mighty river reaching the sea, he reaches the Seventh and Final Stage. He moves into a retirement condo, or an assisted-living facility, or an active-seniors facility, or a nursing home.

The important thing is, he has no lawn to mow. A man’s lawn-mowing life is behind him. He has nothing left to do but shuffle down the hallway in his pajamas, pushing his walker in front of him.

Wait. What are those sounds he’s making?

Danged if they’re not engine noises.