A few months back, our neighbor Mike loaned Brian his backhoe to remove a stump from our front yard. We were doing some serious cleaning out of bramble, which had all but taken over our yard, so the back hoed stump was only a small piece of the yard-makeover puzzle.
Brian was thrilled. He emailed all of his boys to tell him about the monstrous piece of equipment decorating our front lawn.
Imagine my pleasure when all of Brian's boys called me on the second day of backhoe-heaven and announced they'd be coming over to help me haul bramble and branches later that evening! I was thrilled - hauling branches is no fun by yourself, and with a half dozen manly-men, the job would be finished in a matter of a few hours!
Brrrrumble-dee-rumble-de-putt-put-vroom-vroom was the noise that ruined me. Brian fired up the beast and it was as though some sort of ancient macho-sonar kicked in. The boys were drawn like zombies to the deep rumbling noise. Within five minutes I was hauling bramble by myself again, and a small ritualistic gathering of men had formed a worship-circle around the dozer.
For four hours they stood motionless, watching Brian work, mesmerized - drooling. I finally took a break to see what the fuss was about and every man within a two-mile radius had gathered on my front lawn, beer in hand, to watch this amazing miracle machine.
What they saw: a smooth, glistening metal ballet dance, man and machine as one, combined - working together toward yardly perfection - a perfect union. Godly. MANLY, the power to CONQUER! TO DESTROY! TO FEEL LIKE A SUPERHERO! AHAHAHAHA! I AM INVINCIBLE! I AM MACHINE-MAN!
What I saw: A greasy, dirty yellow piece of noisy machinery moving dirt from one spot to another and a crapload of drooling testosterone-overloaded men who WERE NOT HELPING ME ANYMORE!!!!
So, the Briguy is moving up in the world of heavy equipment ownership. He's got the lawn tractor (it's not a MOWER, ladies, it's a TRACTOR) and now he feels ready for a dozer . . . or a backhoe . . . or he would even settle for a four wheeler.
"They'd be for work, not play, ya know," he says.
Yeah, sure.
Peace, till next