Stabtime.

by fiona

2009-05-29 15:32:15 PDT

I lost my temper at the lawnmower this morning. It's got this cuttings-catching canvas thing that attaches to the machine itself, and the bag started randomly detaching itself and falling off in the middle of a row, spraying grass and dirt and chestnut shrapnel everywhere.

The first time, I was like, oh, okay, I didn't attach it quite right. So I was extra-careful about hanging the little metal grippy-hooks to the bar at the rear of the lawnmower. Then I cranked the thing up again, took two steps, and the bag collapsed. Gross powdered yard everywhere. I took a breath, then put the thing back on with the care of a surgeon reattaching a finger to LeBron James. Then I yanked on it a bit to test its commitment, which a surgeon would hopefully not do to LeBron James or anyone. It seemed sound. I pulled the cord, completed the row, was just starting to enjoy Impeccable Blahs again, got halfway through the next row, and: the thing falls off.

So I called it a fuckface, which is my longtime assault word of choice. I didn't scream it or anything, more conversational: "Hey, canvas bag. What's new? Oh, yeah. You're a real fuckface, you know that?" Totally calm. "I'm going to kill you, you stupid fuckface bag." And the rhythm of that sort of stuck in my head, and I was kinda singing it to myself in a creepy little voice with a reedy accent, like I was some pre-WWI British child who'd gotten tuberculosis so had been locked away from people for, like, two years in a room with no company excepting a picture of his mother (Viola) and an evil rocking horse, but could see other kids out his window playing by a pond.

Anyway, I found a twig and tried cleaning the little chewed-up bits of grass from the grooves where the little hooky-things go, thinking that might be the problem, because there was no other problem that I could see, no reason why the metal hooks would not remain hanging on their metal bar friend like a bitch is supposed to. And damn, I wouldn't even use the stupid bag, except that it's printed right there on the bag that it's dangerous not to, because you can get projectiled in the face or something. And I just didn't want to be the moron with a hole in her face who appears on the Darwin Awards list because she ignored safety warnings clearly printed on her lawnmower's helpful canvas bag.

I attached the bag. I leaned on that bag. It held. I pulled the cord; the bag quarter-inflated like a diseased lung, coughed, and slid flaccidly off the lawnmower.

I draped the bag on the grass, took a long breath and went for a walk around the perimeter of my yard, pulling measured air in through my nose. I cracked my neck. I'm trying to make a good impression on my new neighbours, right? They're a nice elderly couple on one side and a kindly family on the other. They do stuff like bring us cookies and lend us trailers to haul yard stuff away. They do not deserve to be exposed to the toxic depths of my constantly enraged true self. Then, I asked the bag if it had had a good rest, and soccer-kicked the fucker as hard as I could, which sent it spinning into the air. Because I am an idiot, I ran after it as it soared, the better to give it the finger, and so got gritty yard waste rained all over my sweaty idiot face. I flailed the bag to the ground, and kicked it around the yard, then flogged it against the ground for awhile like I was Pete Townshend, calling it USELESS FUCKING FUCKBAG FUCK.

Then I looked up and there was a man doing some yardwork at the church that backs onto our property, and watching me. I mean, he wasn't even maliciously enjoying the fact that I'm clearly a total spaz. No, he just looked dismayed, maybe even a little wounded. I pointed at the bag and sort of shrugged, like dude I'm really sorry but it has to be this way, you know. But he just turned away. I'm not even worth saving!

But the canvas bag was, because it held. It clung to that bar! The bag was champion through the rest of our huge back yard. So I was enjoying my Thin Lizzy, just finishing up, when the fuckin' basement window spontaneously exploded! I wasn't even really near it! I jumped in the air like, again, a complete spaz, and (embarrassingly) reflexively looked around. I mean, what did I think? That I was under sniper fire from another canvas bag, positioned in the church bell tower? Why am I such an idiot? Anyway, I guess that some projectile-- a rock? A chestnut?-- had been spit forth from the lawnmower into the glass. So now I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, how well does that bag work, really, if shit is still ricocheting around the yard at death-force 6 even when the damn receptacle is affixed?! I went to all that effort, and for what?! I felt extreme wrath: Mind-warping wrath. Tony Soprano beating his bartender with a phone wrath. Vietnam wrath!

But I just made this long bereaved animal lowing sound, threw my hat across the yard, and stomped inside. There's a mirror right inside our back door, which reported to me the wealth of sooty filth that had adhered to my face, leaving me looking like a butch Oliver Twist. With rolling white crazy-eyes. The dog took one look at me and peaced me the fuck out.

Pretty sure I'm going to stab that bag until I can stab no more.

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