CAMPOut: Fay's Rehoboth Journal

Much to Bonnie’s relief, I’ve kept the following story to myself for three long years. But the time has come to, well, come out of the closet about the riding mower.

I’ve decided to do this, since I finally heard a more dramatic lawnmower story than our own. And the new story falls under the mantle of "no event is totally horrible if you can tell a good story about it."

So just let me say that when my friends up the street told me their lawnmower tale, I had to tell you ours.

I’ll start by saying the obvious. Almost nothing is private in this town. I say "almost," because the truth about our lawnmower has somehow eluded the community hotline. It’s about the only thing that has.

If I show up at a CAMP event or some happy hour with a friend in tow but no Bonnie, she’ll get a call within minutes wanting to know who I’m running around with. Don’t try to pull anything off in this town. The whole population works for Magnum P.I.

We were practically on the news when one of our cars went to the shop. Coming home we stopped by our local fancy car lot to ogle. Bonnie stared adoringly at a Mercedes convertible and the proprietor, to stem her drooling on it, offered to let Bonnie drive it for the day. With our car in the shop, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

Not fifteen minutes after I got back to my office, I got not one but two phone calls congratulating us on the new convertible. In the seven minutes my spouse had been home, two investigators (four prying private eyes) had cruised by the driveway and zeroed in on the trophy car.

"Get that thing back to its home NOW!" I hollered to Bonnie, not wanting to spend the rest of the day denying the purchase or the rest of the year convincing people we hadn’t bought a sexy speedster in lieu of paying the mortgage.

Which brings me back to the riding mower. One day, shortly after Bonnie’s dreams came true and we purchased a tractor to trim the crabgrass, Bonnie came home with an extraordinarily sheepish look on her face.

After serving me an anticipatory Grey Goose martini, offering me some un-requested canapés and sitting down next to me in an uncharacteristically humble pose, Bonnie said she just HAD to confess.

"What????"

"The only reason I’m telling you this is that I’m sure you’ll hear about it any second. I’m surprised the phone isn’t ringing now."

"What, What?????" I stammered, looking to see if the two dogs at my feet were healthy or if the sky was falling.

She then described her trip to have the blades sharpened on her pet lawnmower. Apparently this took a day or two and involved leaving the lawnmower at the kennel overnight—I have no idea about this stuff.

However, upon picking the beast back up and loading it into the truck, as politicians are fond of saying, "mistakes were made."

Suffice it to say, when Bonnie and her mower stopped at the light at Route 24 and Plantations Road, Bonnie glanced in her rear view mirror to see her prized mower lurch backward, then fall out of the truck onto the pavement. Good God! If a car had been back there it would have been vehicular mower slaughter. As it was, it was just plain mower slaughter.

"I thought the mower sharpener man tied it down and he thought I tied it down," Bonnie said, staring at the floor.

Apparently, the behemoth yard vehicle landed on the pavement on all fours, bounced and returned to earth somewhat splayed, its wheels going east and west, it’s hood cracked and several of its vital organs hemorrhaging fluids.

A car screeched to a halt behind the mess, and a quartet of young men ran to aid the damsel in distress. They scooped up the machine and most of its parts and hoisted it back into the truck. Bonnie, completely humiliated, having caused a huge traffic back-up, and sure that she was already on candid camera, transported the patient right back to the stunned mower repairman.

Ultimately, he fixed the thing so it would mow, but cosmetically it’s been a prime candidate for Extreme Makeover ever since.

So, what could be a worse, therefore a better, story? Well, my friend the boat captain also owns a riding mower and she lives adjacent to a canal off Arnell Creek. Uh huh. She was going for that last, errant blade of grass, at the very edge of the lawn, by the bulkhead at the water, and…Geronimo!!!!!!!!

Fortunately it was low tide.

Fortunately she wasn’t hurt going in.

Unfortunately this tractor driver is also the owner of a very expensive computerized prosthetic leg.

Now I have to stop here and tell you how much I admire the captain. She’s made an amazing and audacious recovery from the accident that caused her to own this high-tech kneecap and all that goes with it. She’s able to captain boats, play golf, and do far more athletic things than I can on my own two feet. It’s amazing and wonderful.

However, the leg is not waterproof.

That’s right, not only did she drown her $1000 lawn mower, but she shorted out her amazing, golf-enabling, trick knee that costs forty-five times what the lawnmower cost. Euwwwww.

Thank goodness her mate came running when she heard the scream and the splash, and all was well that ended well. For the driver. The mower was given a decent burial and last I heard, the snazzy prosthetic leg was beeping and blinking like an extra-terrestrial and will probably have to be Fed-Exed overseas for an overhaul.

Shortly the story will become funny at that house on Arnell Creek, just as Bonnie dumping her mower out of the truck has become humorous in our house (although when she sees this in print, we might be dredging up some of that old bad humor).

But you know, as I write, Bonnie is outside, riding our poor banged up tractor. It mows a lopsided swath, is missing its hood and one headlight, but like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going and going.

As Bonnie and the bummed up mower wobble by the window there’s an analogy in all this. Even as I type, words that would have been on the tip of my tongue a decade ago, are now retrieved a whole lot slower. And lots of us are becoming chronologically, aesthetically challenged. But while we may not be spanking brand new anymore, and some of us may not have all our parts, we’re all still going strong. And that’s a good thing.

Of course, I’ve witnessed Bonnie lust after one of those new John Deere mowers at Home Depot, but she hasn’t had the nerve to start lobbying for one. Yet.