What You Just Might Have to Look Forward to if You're Not Good

Try something for me. It'll make this just a teensy bit more understandable for you. Close your eyes and try not to move your eyeballs or twitch your lids even just the teensiest tiniest little bit at all. For a whole minute. Think you did good? Now try it for a whole day. Think you're still doing good? Now imagine putting the barb from one of those really annoying plants that gets caught on you clothes and takes froever to pick out under your eyelid so that if you actually DO move your eyeball just the minutest amount or wiggle your eyelid ever-so-slightly, you'll feel it. And it'll hurt like hell. I mean, those little fuckers have prickles all over them and their fucking little barbs get caught in everything.

K, but you're not done yet. Now, put that barb-y planty thingy in there, then add a light-sensitive dimension to the pain - every time you look at light, or every time the intensity of light changes - say the sun goes behind a cloud or someone turns off a light down the hall, or your neighbor's motion sensor light flips on and off every time the wind blows that god-damned tree branch in front of it? any time something like that happens, the barb gets squished in your eye. Like, someone huge shoves their fist in your eye and holds it there for 15 or 20 seconds.

Now, the day this first occurs, add an emergency room visit, with fucking brilliant fluorescent lights and constant flashes and inconsiderate arrogant assholes opening and closing flimsy curtains designed to keep nothing out and constant loud noises (which attract your attention and FORCE your eyes to move...really, try it) and only a dentist's chair to sit in.

Stay in that emergency room for a minimum of 7 hours, until 4 in the morning, ensuring that you WILL NOT get a good night's sleep.

For fun, throw in a nurse's warning that the numbing drops they've been pouring profusely into your eyes for the past 7 hours (causing burning and stinging sensations just before your eye goes mindlessly numb and your head begins to spin from some weird side effect) WILL MELT YOUR CORNEA if you use them too much. But not tell you how the fuck too much is too much, of course, and you KNOW she has no idea how many medical students and residents and attendings and specialists and opthamologists and janitors have come in and dumped some of the shit in your eye in the last 5 hours. So now you've got a nagging worry in the back of your mind. Just a little one. After all, you have one good eye.

Now stay in bed for two days, unable to read, unable to watch TV (cause THAT fucking hurts) unable to have conversations (you'd be shocked that you can't just keep your damned eyeball still while you talk), unable to pee because you can't find your way to the bathroom, unable to eat because the food can't find it's own damn way to your mouth, unable to cry because it hurts like a bitch.

Then have the brilliant 83 year old opthamologist tell you he's not happy with the way your special little 3-yr old's finger hole in your eye is healing, and have him SHOVE gauze in your eye (which, PS, hurts), tape it on your face with approximately 67 pieces of surgical tape (which isn't SUPPOSED to come off), in what he calls a "pressure patch." Now stay like that for another day. Peel the tape off, because you're NOT ALLOWED to just leave it on there until the stickiness just fades away, you've got to peel it out of your eyebrows and sideburn fuzz. Because that's what hell is.

And here is the reason why you need to eat your vegetables and mind your manners and not chase girls and be nice to animals and clean up your room and not waste your food and all those other things that your Momma always told you you should do. Because this could be just one of the many versions of hell that you may have to look forward to in your afterlife. And believe me, you don't want it.

That’s It. We’re Suing.

A little over a year ago, we had some good friends who were moving out of town, selling their house and moving into an apartment for awhile. As their move coincided closely with the beginning of our first spring in our new house with a gloriously huge backyard, these friends were nice enough to donate, free of charge, their lawn mower to us.

Which was fantastic. And we used the lawn mower all last spring and summer and fall on our gloriously huge backyard and all this spring and… then the fucker broke down. Approximately ¾ of the way through the yard. Which, I might add, makes the yard look fantastically terrible.

Of course the Unsupportive Louse spent hours letting it cool and checking the oil and triple-checking the gas and unclogging the blades and re-priming the primer-y thingy and yanking on the cord-y start-y thingy. And nothing worked.

And of course there was all sorts of swearing and all sorts of “shits not made like it used to be” yells and “good money” curses thrown in to unintelligibly mumbled screams. Of course, it wasn’t OUR good money, but I’m sure SOMEONE paid good money for it.

When slightly calmer, the Unsupportive Louse decides that we should opt for a hand powered push mower in the future, rather than rely on machinery that’s bound to die or need repairs in no time at all, and being the environmentalist hippy that I am, I think this is a great plan.

The next day, he purchases our first hand mower. And painfully (oh so very painfully) puts the thing together. Because it seems hand mowers, like all of Santa’s best toys, don’t come assembled. Once we’re happily back in the land of cursing and yelling, the damn thing is pulled and dragged and kicked and manhandled into the backyard to finish off that last crappy looking bit that now has massive dandelions that are actually bold enough to laugh out loud at the new mower…and with good reason.

The thing blew. Some spots The Unsupportive Louse went over a dozen times before it looked vaguely trimmed. And even then, the dandelions would simply pop back up and spit in his eye before spewing their seeds across the rest of the lawn.

So it gets thrown into the back of the very manly cruck and driven right back to the store (possibly with a few corners taken a few miles too fast just to teach the damn thing a lesson) and returned. With no replacement purchased. I refrain from asking any questions.

But the grass is growing fast this rainy season and I can’t stay too quiet for too long. And my very own little old lady of a mother used a hand mower for years while she lived all alone and lonely after we’d all deserted her in California. They can’t all be terrible. So back the cruck goes to a different hardware store and home comes a new hand mower, assembly required.

Yelling, screaming, cursing ensues, lawn mowing is attempted…and you guessed it, the lawn wins again.

And so now we must discuss what our plans are, because clearly we (and by we, I mean he) cannot purchase, assemble, and return a hand mower EVERY week for the rest of the summer.

We’ve come to a decision. We’ve decided to sue the friends who gave us the lawn mower that broke down in the first place. After all, this pain and suffering and loss of valuable family time and gas money and mental anguish is truly their fault for giving us, free of charge, such a shoddy lawn mower in the first place. I think this is a fair and reasonable decision. (And as an added bonus, will place us firmly back in the sphere of “Californians” rather than “Midwesterners” which we’d really prefer not to be considered, 'cause, dude, they're weird.)

So – you know who you are. The next time your doorbell rings? You’ve been served. And it serves you right.