Chuckle #489 | May 3rd, 2012
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Some
guys are head-over-heels in love with their circular saw, others with their
snow blower. This is normal. If your husband is really into his chain saw
don’t call the psych ward just yet. Deep
“dude / tool” relationships are simply the result of too much testosterone and too
little hanky-panky. Or so says Dr. Ruth.
My
husband happens to have a thing for his lawnmower. She’s like his second wife and he lets her
get away with murder. I don’t know
whether to call their relationship disturbingly intimate or just plain disturbing.
But
there’s a bright side. The fact that my
husband still adores his duct tape
covered rust bucket of a mower is a great
sign for my marriage.
Think
about it. I regularly work out and shower daily. But if I should happen to put on 30 pounds, I
fully expect my husband to cut me and the lawnmower the same amount of “letting
ourselves go” slack. Not that I want to
test that theory any time soon.
I
don’t really understand the machine/man relationship. I work a lot harder at being married than she
does. She just sits there and rusts and
he thinks she’s awesome. Of course the
fact that she can’t talk and that I never shut up probably gives her an advantage.
The
lawnmower may be old and ugly but she’s got a certain grease monkey je ne sais
quoi. Quite frankly she’s beginning to
creep me out a bit, like those movies where the nanny tries to move in on the
wife’s ‘turf’.
She’s
devious. Every spring she refuses to
turn over so that every year my husband has to rebuild her engine. He’s replaced every part of her, from top to
bottom, spark plugs to carburetor. He probably
knows her chassis better than he
knows mine.
Hence
my evil Tudor-like plan to eliminate her and become queen of my castle once
again. Besides, I have safety
concerns. How can I let the kids mow the
lawn when she’s clearly out to get us, Hand
that Rocks the Cradle style?
She’s
become a danger to the family and not just because of the loose parts and the
leaky gas tank. My husband agrees, but
he still thinks that there is life in the old gal, and he’s taken to calling her
“L-O-L-A”.
If
you know the Kinks tune, you’ll know why I find this disturbing.
Seriously
though, no amount of Duct Tape and Gunk-Out can protect us from this diabolical
mechanical interloper. Someone is going
to lose an eye, and our insurance doesn’t cover accidental maiming. Oh yes, I checked.
You
would think he’d want a shiny new mower
with cool features and less emotional baggage.
“No”,
he says, he would not.
“Not
even for Father’s Day?” I ask.
“No”,
he says, even more emphatically.
“How
about for your birthday?” I suggest.
He
shakes his head and tunes me out the way that husbands do when wives talk about
stuff unrelated to baseball.
The
refusal to upgrade (or buy anything new) is common among guys; don’t think you
have a deficient model. Men get attached
to their tools, and men are cheap. They don’t
want to shell out $400-600 bucks for a decent gas or electric mower even though
they plan to mate with it for life, like a swan.
I
can only hope that my husband is equally attached to me.
I’m
still shopping for a new mower, despite my husband’s objections, mostly because
I’m determined to send my son off to college this fall with all his fingers and
toes. I’m getting rid of Lola even if I have report
Dad to OSHA or call the EPA about the fuel spills.
I’d
even be willing to give the new mower a name if it would make my husband happy,
but not Lola. We’d have to go with
something less hooker-like; maybe a unisex name, like “Pat” or “Sydney”.
In
the meantime, I’m trying to wean him off the mower by playing up the attributes
of his new weed wacker. She’s a long
legged NiCad battery powered hottie with tons of features. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?
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