All Hail the King

People have some irrational fears and I am their King. Although I can put up with such mindbenders as my peanut butter touching my jelly, or at least I could if I were't an even bigger fan of peanut butter and more peanut butter sandwiches, and I can also put up with knowing that the world will end, the globe will cool, my own mortality and that actors, as a rule, are munchkin like and chicks seem to dig 'em anyway, there are still things I fear.

I hate anything besides air or music in my ears. Things do not belong inside an ear. Period. Wanna hear me whimper? Try to clean my ears. But, I have posted on this before. And as I have said too many times to count, if there's one thing I'm not it's redundant. No really, I say it a lot.

Now yesterday I was hacking off tall weeds with a dull spinning blade and calling it mowing. Of course, I was calling the weeds "lawn", so, like boogers or blood, it all comes out in the wash. Anyway I have me one of them mulching mowers. It has a nice 6 HP Briggs & Stratton on it. But the wheel is plastic. I already had one just fall off after 3 uses so I know. Now when I mow I obsess on the wheel falling off and it takes a little of the joy out of mowing. No, again really, I do. Obsess.

But to obsess is not the same as to fear. Irrational or otherwise. A mulching mower has no chute. It shoots everything straight down and hits it again. it is called mulch, because "creamed grass" sounds more like a soup. A soup for stoners. Because it has no chute, a lot of little particles of crap and dust wafts up and if there is the slightest breeze dink dink dink they hit you in the face. Fear of particles? Not hardly. Why, they're only dusty mulch.

Red ants are small. At least the ones I have here are. Even in the ant family they are ant-like. Dimunitive, if you will. Bet they get a lot of ant chicks, though. Ant ass, Sid. Anyway, they're mean. (As the DBT so eloquently put it, "... hard like the folks from south Alabama and mean like the people from here. We ain't never gonna change.") They crawl onto your toes and take tours of your legs. They get on your hands and into your armpits. They really get around. And once they are all loaded up on ya, they bite. They bite like a girl in a knife fight. Hard and like their life depended on it. Little bastards. It hurts. It is a surprise attack and it hurts. But am I fearful of them? Nope. Respectful, yes. Fearful, no.

What I was fearful of, and I am going to finally share with you, was running over their numerous ant hills on this breezy day with my half plastic mulching mower. I was a'feared that some of the mean little suckers would get caught up in the escaping crap particulate/dust mixture and be wafted on the breeze up and onto my face where they would get into my eyes and bite me. Hard, like a girl in a bear hug. (Note: Girl in bear rug, good. Girl in bear hug, not so much.) And I would be blinded. And, as if that were not going to be embarrassing enough, I would be running around clutching my face and screaming which I am sure would make all the neighbors that see me immediately say, "Hmmmm. The boy just ain't right. I wonder if he's on the crack?"

Interestingly enough, in this whole power spraying of ants to the face scenario, I did not once think about the ants possibly getting into my ears. They do say that you will subconsciously block out things that are too horrible for your mind to accept. That's probably what happened.

Thank you for coming, please be seated, out
Ramblin' Ed