The Princess and the Power Mower

I’m going to tell a fairy tale.  This is not a happy tale.  This is more a fable or a parable.  It has a moral.  And like the original Grimm Brothers fables, it can be, well, grim at times.

I have one regret in life.  One time I called a man my lover.  I called this same man an uneducated, illiterate fool who would never amount to anything.  Or something to that effect.  I wish I hadn’t done that.  I’ve learned to bite my tongue.

I never thought I’d see the day that I was working hourly, under a brick-oven sun for this same man.  Or that’d I would be excited, even blood-hungry crazy, for this 13 bucks an hour.  Neither did he.

Life’s a funny bitch like that.  She’s a jokester she is.  She gets drunk and conjures up all sorts of strange ideas.  And once you learn to accept her for who she is, life gets easier.  She’s just that insane friend we all have.  You’ve known her since you were five years old.  You probably met on the playground when she showed you how to kiss boys behind the slide.  You stayed friends though high school because she drove your drunk ass around when you couldn’t hold your head up.  Now you’d never be friends if you met her at work because she’s nuts.  However, because you met her when you were only five years old, when you didn’t know any better, you’re still friends.  And she gets a kick out of the jokes she plays on you.  But I digress.

And here I am.  Almost two years after we broke it off due to irreconcilable differences I am a Carehart-wearing lawn girl with my ex-boyfriend as my boss.  I like to think I held my own pulling, and pushing, and shoving, and moving, and raking and baking, and extricating.  I walked the walk and talked the talk. I swaggered and I dropped the G’s off the end of my active verb conjugations.  I blew snot rockets and hawked loogies.  I had my first real urge to light up a Marlboro Red and spit at things that I passed in my big red landscaping truck.  I probably looked every bit the over-educated, upper middle class nerd that I am.  But I’m going to pretend that I didn’t.

To add insult to injury, as if life hadn’t proved her point already, I got fired, or rather laid off, by my boyfriend turned boss.  Apparently his girl back home disliked the idea of us working with each other.  To be more accurate I think she disliked the idea of us being with a ten state radius of each other let alone a ten-foot radius.  But again, I digress.  The point is I got fired.

The moral of this story (because all good stories should have morals) is that if you are a bitch, and say mean things, life will turn your world around.  Karma is real shit.  Not to be messed with.  And that is how I ended up working hourly for my ex-lover who I once thought was stupid and would never amount to anything.  And then we rode off into the sunset of a big, red rider mower and lived happily ever after.  The end.

PS Rob I’m sorry.  I take it back.  I’m proud of you.  You rock.