Looking through some old musings, I came across this story from about two summers ago. My father inadvertently taught me a lesson about my health and what I need to do to really stay in shape – but you know, some days Dad really does not have a clue!
I used to mow my parents’ lawn all through my high school years and in summers home from college. Not too bad, boring stuff, calluses on the hands, a little sweat. Until I went to college I was thin, and then put on weight that I still carry, sadly. Part of it was the excessive consumption of food late at night – and yes, alcohol – but I realize now that while I was at college I did not have to take any phys. ed. courses, played only some intramural sports and pickup games, and did not have the regular physical work around the house, like mowing lawns or raking leaves or shoveling snow. That’s why the infamous “freshman fifteen” became the “midlife fifty.”
My parents have a bigger house than they did when I was a teenager, and a bigger lawn, and sometimes he pays someone to do it, sometimes he does it himself , but at 69, with macular degeneration, and at least one procedure to remove pre-cancerous skin cells — to say nothing of the blood pressure and cholesterol-control meds he’s on — he probably shouldn’t be doing it on a hot summer day like it was back in July of 2004, when we were visiting. So I did most of it — he’d started it before I got home.
It was killing me. I was pushing hard up and down hills, around bumpy tree roots, gingerly moving round mulch areas so as not to cover the new trees with the clippings, and I was dying. How the hell does he do this? Now, I know that the old property was smaller and not hilly but still, this is insane. I took a break — I never took breaks fifteen, no wait, TWENTY years ago! Am I really that out of shape, that old, I’m thinking.
Before I started up again, he refilled the gas tank. I said to him, “what’s this thing do,” pointing to a lever that looks like a lock of some kind.
“You have to lock that before you start mowing — that’s the self-propel switch.”
The WHAAAT?
“The self-propel switch. You didn’t have it on before?”
NO-OH!!
“I’m sorry I thought you knew this was self-propelling – it’d kill you otherwise!”
I’d forgotten that most of the mowers I’d used did all the moving, that all you had to do was steer the damn thing.
So there I was ready to join a gym or something rash like that, and my dad reminds me of his trick!
I finished the lawn by letting the mower move up the hill as we slashed away. But believe it or not, I shut the self-propel switch off a few times, just to feel like I’d worked off that big breakfast we’d had earlier.
Since then, I’ve joined Weight Watchers and lost thirty-two pounds. I’ve put some of it back on, but I’m ready to do some more mowing this summer.