oldest son to help<\/a>. Last year,\u00a0work became\u00a0so busy that I\u00a0no longer had the time to mow, so we paid a service.<\/p>\nWhen work became unexpectedly lighter this year, I cancelled the service, only to discover that\u00a0the mower had died. As part of the repair, I paid to have the drive fixed.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to a couple days ago, when my grumbling twelve-year old was being forced back into lawn service.<\/p>\n
“Let me show you,” I said. “It’s different now.”<\/p>\n
“I know how to mow.”<\/p>\n
“But –\u00a0”<\/p>\n
“I know what I’m doing!”\u00a0He pushed\u00a0the lever that disengages the drive mower.<\/p>\n
When the drive mechanism broke, I started keeping it disengaged all the time, and that’s how I taught him. I don’t think he knew what the disengage lever did. He just knew that he had to keep it pushed forward.<\/p>\n
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.<\/p>\n
“I know how to mow!”<\/p>\n
He pulled the rope and the mower roared to life. He leaned into it, preparing to push.<\/p>\n
“I can show you an easier way!” I shouted.<\/p>\n
“I got it!” he shouted back.<\/p>\n
I reached over and\u00a0flicked the\u00a0lever to engage the mower, then nudged the handle forward. The mower\u00a0lurched forward. He\u00a0stumbled\u00a0after it, surprised, then continued on his way.<\/p>\n
I stood there, waiting for him to look over his shoulder\u00a0so I could show off my I-told-you-so smile, but he didn’t even glance back.<\/p>\n
Sheesh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It does feel good to be right every once in a while… but in this case, it could have felt better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-8Fb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}