Best Giggle
What is the best amusement you had, listening to the sounds outside your window?
There are two instances that come to mind easily, that I’ve probably mentioned other-blog. Both happened within weeks of each other, in the summer of 2002. The sounds wafted in through my open computer room window, curtains billowing softly in the breeze.
Our neighbor, some Asian guy, mowed his yard every weekend, whether it rained or shined. He used a gas-powered push mower with the usual blades underneath. There was no basket to catch clippings, he preferred to leave those on the ground.
He had the most annoying habit of mowing over rocks, without even trying to avoid them. It was for this reason that he strapped leather coverings over his lower legs, to keep the flying projectiles from stinging him in the shins. That poor mower would be chugging along valiantly, only to be thwarted by another rock of not insignificant size: “RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrNEEEEERRRRROOOOWWWW–*some projectile thwacking against the side of his house, or the fence, or even our house*–rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrNNNEEEEEERRRRRRRROWWWWW–”
He was doing this one fine day while I was chatting with a friend online. So of course I had to slip into conversation, “Welp, the next door neighbor is mowing his rocks again.” Which had the desired effect of my friend not typing for several minutes, too lost in laughter to respond properly.
And then there was the day that the neighbor across the street got a wood chipper. They had demolished this grand ol’ tree in their front yard, for some silly reason, a nice conifer hundreds of feet tall, with a swingset on one of the lowest branches and everything. That sucker was goin’ down. They had a professional tree-felling company chunk it down piece by piece, starting at the top and working their way to the roots. And of course they had to get rid of the evidence, wherein the wood chipper was rented from somewhere and put to use.
Now, this neighbor, and many others on the same street, had more than a couple children. As this was summer and it was overwhelmingly sunny (in the Pacific Northwest, any clear day is overwhelmingly sunny), the children were running amok, no doubt revelling in the fact that they didn’t have to be stuck in a stuffy classroom this day. They were hollaring it up as they rode bikes and chased each other up and down the streets. The neighbor who mowed his rocks had three little ones, and they pretty much lived in this little wading pool on the side of their house nearest to us.
Now, imagine me innocently typing away on my computer, and stopping to listen to the cacophany outside. Children screaming in laughter, and the wood chipper making much the same noises as the mower being called upon to eat rocks.
I was in a silly mood, and started giggling to myself as the noises merged. Of course I would wish no harm to children nor trees, but I had this mental image of the the children screaming because of the wood chipper.
Hrm, typing that out makes the mental image rather gruesome. Guess you had to be there.
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Challenge yourself to Holidailies 2009 by writing one entry each day in December.
Can you blog each day for an entire month? Try it!
