Back then you saw the guys mowing their lawns and you’d shake your head thinking, no no no, you would never become one of those, like them.
But then you’d spend most of your life trying to fit in, cheering the team, taking the bus to work, standing in line, afraid to be late, following each and every one of the rules of being a decent, ordinary citizen, parent, husband, homeowner…lawn cutter. Fitting in, or trying to. But it never felt quite right. More like the old square in the round hole sort of thing, as you sat at your desk, reading the words, the numbers, getting paid every week and thinking, no no no, there’s more to it than this. You were more than this, you had something to say. Or was it just a conceit, an ego-based lie?
Now you’re staring at yourself in the mirror at work, seeing eyebrows growing in directions they shouldn’t grow, hairs sprouting out of your ear holes that have no business being there, while the hair that used to be on your head is disappearing, vaporizing, migrating to the nose holes and the ear holes where they have no right being.
Remembering being a kid – seems like only a fortnight ago – riding the train with the other kids to the ballpark – Wrigley Field – getting off the El, walking the short walk to the park, waiting in line, handing over your dollar to sit in the bleachers to watch the terrible, terrible Cubs lose another game (on their most perfect, most enviable lawn). Simpler times, way back, easier times.
You were cutting lawns then, too. But later on, when you were older, college-aged, convinced of not your brilliance, but maybe general smarts–no never convinced of brilliance, that was for goddamned sure, just maybe with a hope that you had a spark of something, that you might be something special (illusion sold to college students the world round?), soon to get out, released, as it were, to the real world to realize that nobody gave a shit about your goddamned BS in Psychology and your half a Masters in Advertising, nobody gave two, not even three shits about it, as you applied for jobs in warehouses, toy stores, retail stores, encyclopedia companies (failing the grammar test!). No, nobody cared. It was not true currency, that degree, that piece of paper with the embossed stamp on the bottom, in the Real World. The cold hard sonofabitchin’ real fuckin’ world.
And where did this all start? How did you get here to begin with, to this oddly not-fitting-in generally in the world state of mind, being?
Childhood. Yeah, blame it all on childhood, like they all do, like you never did. Thought that was a crock, an excuse, always. Like when your sister, Roan (stepsister, that is), would go on and on for hours about how Mom did this, and Mom did that, and how you were always wallpaper, etc. etc. etc. Yeah, stuffing the food down while the circus dinner table show was on every night, one parent screaming at one stepchild or another (while you hunkered down, shoveled that food in) until one kid or other (now it’s your brother, Paul, and now it’s Roan, the two most common runners) ran from the table, up the stairs and slammed their door, and turned up the music in their bedroom, in your modest bilevel home, and silence enveloped what was left of the dinner table crowd.
Fucked-up-ness. Your word to basically sum up your childhood.
And cutting grass. Your stepfather showing you how to operate the edger, to edge those edges so you have a nice square box of sod in the small patch of grass in front of the house, do it right. Cover it up. Order the disorder within. Yeah, that’s it. That’s right. The lunatics running the asylum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Smoking a cigarette. Stamping it out on the sidewalk in the hot sun (no trees growing here, none big enough to provide shade, anyway), with his brown leather shoe. Smiling. You smiling back. “Thanks, Dad.” What the fuck.
And now. Now…these many years later, you open your garage door, step up onto your John Deere riding mower, sit down, start her up, and back her out to cut your slightly bigger patch of grass.