I was mildly annoyed to come home and find a tree in my yard. Normally this isn’t a problem. I come home to trees in the yard all the time. If I’m feeling particularly chipper, I might even greet them with a “Hi tree!” as I walk by. However this was different, as my yard guest had gone from being a vertical tree to a horizontal tree.
Fortunately it was a small tree and had died long before I moved in. I was even reflecting not two weeks ago “Hmm, I should doing something about that tree.” Before I could though, Mother Nature took matters into her own hands and knocked it down with a strong gust of wind.
Usually I would just note the event, decide “Well, it’s biodegradable” and move on to my X-box game of choice for the night. Sadly this was not an option though because such inaction would cause my tenant to have a stroke. This would make collecting rent much more difficult.
Although I own the duplex I live in, my tenant does all the groundskeeping. She is fanatical, mowing the yard multiple times a day. I actually feel guilty walking on my own grass. The thought of the wrath I would incur leaving a dead tree lying in the yard was not appealing.
So I did what any manly homeowning guy man would do. I called someone else to do it. Unfortunately my handyman Matt was unavailable for days. Tenant conniption would erupt long before then.
I was faced with a terrifying prospect. For the first time since I moved in over a year and a half ago, I would have to do…yard work! With power tools even! I didn’t actually own any power tools per se, so it was off to our new neighborhood Menards, where you can save big money provided you are not a lawncare challenged retard with no clue what you are doing.
I purchased the smallest wussiest electric chainsaw they had. I figured when I got home I would just pop it out of the box, saw away for a couple of minutes and be done in plenty of time for X-Box. Imagine how stunned I was when I opened the box and found my new toy in several pieces. Nevermind that the box wasn’t long enough to hold an assembled chain saw.
I opened the owner’s manual, printed in several languages, one of which may have been English. It started with the precautions, like “wear tight clothing”. That definitely wouldn’t be a problem since my back injury had knocked me out of the gym for two months. Everything I wear now has a very “fitted” look to it.
I read on. “AVOID KICKBACK!!! Sometimes the nose of the blade will catch causing the saw to swing back at the operator in a LIGHTENING FAST motion, resulting in injury or death.” Well, that sounds unpleasant. How do I avoid it? I flipped to the next page. Nothing on avoidance. I reread the warning. No mention of how to actually prevent becoming an ex-person. So instead of playing X-Box that night, I signed up for Russian Roulette.
To do this though, I would still have to assemble the death machine. I studied the diagrams, much in the same way a monkey would study an algebra book. After twenty minutes of sticking screws in the wrong holes and having everything fall apart repeatedly, I finally broke down and did what I always do when mechanics confound my little primate brain. I called Ryan.
“Hey man, can you come over and assemble my chainsaw?” For Ryan or any of my friends who know how mechanical I am, this is what you call a “red flag” question. He asked what I needed a chainsaw for, so I told him about Mr. Horizontal. He replied “Dude, why don’t you just borrow my chainsaw?” GULP. I know Ryan has a REAL chainsaw. Not the wussy electric kind, but the kind that quickly settles any neighbor disputes. “Um…sure, ok.” I answered meekly.
I went over to his house and he broke out the beast.
I quickly addressed my concerns with him about KICKBACK. “Oh yeah, this one does that. It will kill you.” He replied. I contemplated losing my diner, but he told me not to worry. Just hold it off to one side and don’t be a pussy. Let the weight of the saw do the work. We practiced on couple branches before he graduated me from Ryan’s Chainsaw Academy.
So I mulled the whole drive home about how I would have to be careful (but not so careful that I got myself killed), and reflected on how much harder life would be three inches shorter. I can barely reach the top shelves of my kitchen cabinets as it is.
But when I got home, I just put my game face on, fired up the chainsaw and quickly ripped Mr. Horizontal into lots of little pieces.
Amazingly when I was finished I still had all my fingers and toes. I could have sawed everything into smaller chunks but decided not to tempt fate. Instead I packed up the beast, and then spent the next two hours breaking down and bagging everything by hand.
However I was not able to escape the night without one accident. As I bent over to pick up the last scraps, I heard a tremendous RIP. I was suddenly aware a cool breeze from the southwest.
Unfortunately the manual never mentioned the hazards of wearing tight clothing…
