The Lawn Mower Incident

Mike Wolcott

I find it funny how people remember things differently as time goes on.  What inspired me to share the following story was a recent dispute that I witnessed between my father and sister, over what I will refer to as the “lawn mower incident”. This event took place many years ago. Both remember the incident very differently and each person has a version of the story that depicts the other as being at fault.  In this article I’m going to recount the “lawnmower incident” from my perspective. After all, I was the only one who witnessed the event through an unbiased lens.

            It was a hot summer day back in the mid 1990s.  My father decided that on this day, my sister Megan would be taught to mow the lawn on his John Deere tractor. He recently claimed that my sister was fifteen years old when this happened and that this was an attempt to prepare her for driving a car. Sorry dad but that is bullshit. Megan was no more than ten years old and was likely younger. How do I know? As weird as it sounds, I remember not knowing my neighbor Ben at that point. Ben moved in across the street when he was five years old. If this was the summer before I met him, I would’ve been six and Megan ten years old. Ten years old is far too young to be driving anything. Then again, she wasn’t asked to parallel park. Hell, to call it driving would be a stretch. She was just kind of sitting on the mower as it crawled across the lawn at the pace of a snail.

           Our front yard is relatively big with no obstacles to speak of, just some pine trees in the very front that mark the end of the lawn. There is no need to maneuver around the trees, just turn around.  My father had the mower set at the lowest gear for the rookie driver. The mower is painfully slow at this speed. It would probably take eleven hours to cut our lawn at this gear. It would take ten minutes just to drive across the street. But I digress. It was a sunny day; my father had his shirt off and was likely wearing a straw hat (as he often does on hot summer days). After some instruction (drive straight and occasionally turn when needed), Megan got up on the old John Deere.
            
         My father had intended for her to drive straight until she reached the pine trees in the front of the yard. She would then have to make a left hand turn and head back in a circle the other way. The John Deere was moving very slow, but after about 30 seconds she was getting close to the trees. “Ok Meg, turn her around” my father said with a sense of encouragement. He seemed proud of his daughter in this moment; she was growing up before his eyes and learning to cut grass. The mower inched closer to the trees, but Megan didn’t react to his advice. “Megan, start turning the wheel!” he said again, this time sounding concerned. Inexplicably, she still didn’t react. At a blazing 2 miles an hour, she was headed directly toward a collision with the massive trees. My father was running up to the trees at this point, “GOD DAMMIT MEGAN TURN THE FUCKING WHEEL!!!!” But still there was no reaction. She didn’t turn the wheel at all.

           Megan’s first and only lawn mowing experience lasted about 45 seconds. The mower crashed directly into the trees and was now stuck within the branches. My father ripped her off the seat and scrambled to get the still running mower disengaged from the branches. This was no easy task, especially since these were pine trees. Megan sprinted for the house with tears in her eyes. My mother, the only onlooker besides yours truly, shook her head from the kitchen window.
             
             My sister’s explanation for the lawnmower incident is that she didn’t know what she was doing and wasn’t given proper instruction. What is there to know exactly? She’s a smart person; all she had to do was turn the wheel. What did she think would happen by driving into a tree?  My dad contests that he spent 15 minutes with her that day going over the ins and outs of tractor driving. When asked why he didn’t do more to stop the slow moving mower his response was “What was I suppose to do? Jump in front of it?” He believes Megan wanted to play with her friends that day and crashed the mower out of spite. While I don’t consider Megan a spiteful person, this argument could have some weight to it. Regardless, the effects of the lawnmower incident had a long term impact on Megan as she hasn’t cut a lawn since, this despite now having a yard of her own. If she ever gets on a tractor again, hopefully she’ll remember to turn the fucking wheel.