Even though Very Best Friend and I have been joined at the hip for more than 30 years, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are alike. We agree on shoes and differ on men. I am an avid outside gardener. VBF is much more comfortable in an air-conditioned cave.

While I’m in the blazing heat worrying over squash bugs, she’s inside perfectly organizing her entire life. It’s her thing. I’ve always felt VBF should have been the founder of The Container Store as everything in her life is overly orderly. Me? I inherited my mother’s throw-it-in-a-pile gene.

Since gardening comes naturally to me, I just assumed she knew her way around her yard. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Very Best Friend is one of those urban types who drives a hybrid, actually saw that Al Gore movie and is the proud owner of an electric lawnmower. You heard me. Think how long the electric cord would have to be on these two acres.

Now I can understand an electric lawnmower for the small amount of land she and Perfectly Engineered Husband own. Their front yard consists of two postage stamps of grass divided by a sidewalk. They believe in native plants meaning all their beds are over grown. Poor city folks. No deer to keep their yard in check.

So the other day, when PEH went on a motorcycle jaunt, he requested that his lovely wife mow the front yard. VBF happily agreed thinking, “How hard could it be to mow two postage stamps?”

After the screaming rant I heard on the phone, evidently it’s a major project for an inside type. First off, she had to find the electrical outlet in her overgrown world. Once she was all plugged in, VBF surveyed the situation. She decided to work from the outside in so none of the “little lawn clippings” would go out into the street. Told you she was way too organized.

Within 30 seconds she had the cord wrapped around a tree. She persevered, unwound it and then managed to get her feet all tangled up in the ergonomically correct mess. As her frustration grew, Very Best Friend began having visions of jumping rope as a girl so she concocted a way to play jump rope with the cord as she was mowing.

It might have been a clever idea, but every time she flung her cord, it got tangled up in a tree. Frankly, this insider gone outside to the wild was lucky she didn’t strangle herself.  I’d have paid a hundred bucks just to video the whole thing. It probably would have gone #1 with a bullet in the YouTube world.

At some point Very Best Friend thought about dumping the lawnmower and getting out a pair of scissors to hand-clip her lawn. She figured it would be easier. But, being the strong business woman she is, she pressed on and only ran over the electric cord near the end of her mission. As we all know a severed cord doesn’t produce any electricity.

VBF wiped her brow, put up her environmentally correct lawn mower, headed to the nearest mega Fix It Store and bought a new cord that looked exactly like the old one. She snuck it home, coiled it up perfectly and burned the cardboard evidence.

Finally, she headed back into her cool, dark cave and hit the Internet in search of a hybrid electricity mowing robot that could handle two postage stamps. Don’t you just love technology?

How it’s done in the country…

Spreading laughter throughout the world…one chuckle at a time.

Mikie Baker
www.mikiebaker.com