After moving here from Colorado, my parents bought a house in Minnesota on ten acres. Their yard looks like a park. Well it does now anyway, when I was growing up my dad’s second business took up quite a LOT of their yard. Now that my dad is retired their yard looks like a park aspiring to be a golf course.
My dad is a bit of a perfectionist, especially when it comes to mowing the grass. The lines HAD to be perfectly straight always running in the same direction. My dad would only let my brother push mow around all the trees, because my brother didn’t care to do ANYTHING inside the lines. He preferred to do wheelies on the lawnmower with the blades running.
Beside my dad I was the only other person allowed to mow the grass on their little red toro with a 20” deck because I followed the “rules”.
My dad’s mowing rules.
- Rule 1 – The lines have to be straight.
- Rule 2 – Do not use any other gear but 4th out of 6.
- Rule 3 – Do not use reverse.
- Rule 4 – If you mess up the lines, make a repeat lap to fix the error.
I’m beginning to think he is a NASCAR fan because we were ALWAYS making left turns.
The grass took a little over four hours to cut. I used to love mowing the grass. A Walkman on my hip, headphones on… it was a four hour long rock show and I was the star!
Fast forward 3 decades, now we have our own house and our own yard to mow. The mowing rules still matter to me, they are tattoo into my soul.
My sons are old enough to share in the yard duties. The older one started mowing a few years ago. I’ve told him the rules over and over and I swear he uses the lawnmowers to practice his signature in our grass. When I point out LARGE patches he’s missed he says he’ll come back for it later. He doesn’t use 4th he uses 6th and reverse ALL the time. I don’t know you could even call what he mows a line, it’s more of spiral squiggle. If Mator’s tow truck was a lawnmower he would definitely be the Mator of the family.
This year our little guy is taking on the front yard responsibility. Rules matter to him. He’s a tiny perfectionist and cares what things look like. His second time mowing the yard looked perfect. He can’t wait to tell my dad how good he is at mowing our yard so he can hopefully mow my parent’s grass and get paid!
It’s interesting to me what things they gravitate toward being perfectionists at. My little guy, tries his hardest at whatever he does. He continually gets better and better in everything he tries. The older one, he cares about one thing… playing guitar and mastering solos. Nothing else matters. Ironically he doesn’t love Metallica but nothing else matters.
Namaste,
Jes xoxo