Masculinity and Lawnmowers FTW: An Important Update

If you missed the first segment in what has unfortunately become an ongoing series, get up to speed here before reading any further.

The proposed lawnmower repair instructional YouTube video continues as follows: 

19. After several weeks have passed and you’ve already returned your brother’s lawnmower after borrowing and using it to save yourself and your family from the ever-encroaching tangle of weeds and exotic grasses that once was your yard, but had morphed into a thriving, highly-threatening, and frankly, terrifying tropical ecosystem, go back to Lowe’s and buy a rotary, push lawnmower that you believe is appropriate for your level of mechanical prowess and is also sufficiently hipster and eco-friendly (pictured below). (Read here for more on my new-found commitment to a hipster lifestyle.)

My Baby

20. Following the directions in the operator’s manual, assemble the lawnmower handle and attach it to the mower part thing (like a boss). 

21. After a few failed push attempts, realize that you have attached the handle backwards. De-attach the handle from the mower part thing, turn it around, and re-attach it in the correct orientation (like a boss). 

22. Try, without success, to attach the final two little ring clip things that the operator’s manual says just snap in. Give up and decide that they are probably not that important anyway. 

23. Invigorated with a spirit of hopefulness and a burgeoning joie de vivre, start mowing your lawn.

24. During the 5-hour lawn mowing period, in which you push and cajole your new mower in every conceivable pattern over, around, and through your front lawn (jungle) until your legs are covered with unidentifiable little green sticker things and the sweat on your t-shirt and shorts has filed for its own Social Security number, slowly come to the demoralizing realization that rotary push mowers are likely most effective when your lawn has the consistency and character of a croquet lawn or Augusta National ‘second cut,’ rather than an Amazon rain forest. 

25. Dejectedly wheel your sad, yet still gleaming, mower back into the garage. Go inside and Google “machetes for lawn,” because that seems like the logical next step. 

26. To be continued…