Somewhere deep within the border of South Carolina there grows a terrible jungle. It is comprised primarily of a handful of wild, spirited, blades of grass and knee-high clumps of innocuous clover. But within this suburban amazon grows a nefarious weed. Surely of alien origins, the hideous vine stretches and writhes its way across a patch of earth no bigger than a dining room. It grows with reckless abandon, choking out its honorable neighbors and defying every last attempt I have made to rid it from my lawn. Whether by some dark art or by an intergalactic will to dominate life on our planet, it defiantly resists the mower, the weed spray, and the inaccurately named weed whacker.
I stepped out my back door and looked out across the vast, vast hundredth of an acre that is but a mockery of the word yard. Such a thing had been the sole reason for my avoidance of homeownership since first I had the opportunity to embark on such a fool’s idea as purchasing and maintaining a residence of my own.
“It’s a great investment,” my grandmother would tell me.
“You’re just throwing your money away renting, you know?” preached my father on a monthly basis.
As I sat down upon the brick step, facing the ever-advancing border of my unkempt lawn, I cursed my meddling elders as respectfully as possible. Would they cut the grass? Would they trim the hedges? Would they go to battle against the vile weed, bent on conquering every last square inch of my property? Would they snatch my innocent dachshund from the clutches of legions of finger-length cockroaches and ill-tempered fire ants, carrying him to the depths of their underworld dungeons?
No. This was my battle – a battle I had successfully avoided for ten years of adulthood; a battle that landlords and groundskeepers had fought for me in a bygone era. I saluted these fine gentlemen as they rejoined the war week after week, for it was their duty to do so. But no longer could I rely on these vigilant stalwarts. I was alone in this fight.
I cracked a beer while I sat on the stoop, considering my first attack. I concocted a fine plan, which relied heavily upon the use of my neighbor’s lawnmower, followed by an immediate assault with the very same neighbor’s edger. It would work. It had to work.
One of my history professors had once told me that the Nazi’s intentionally broke down their concentration camp inmates psychologically with a number of villainous devices. One such torture treatment was to take two prisoners and order them to move a pile of dirt from one end of the compound to the other. Once the pile was moved, they were then told to move the pile back to the same exact spot, and then back to the other end, and so on, for months at a time. It was said that these prisoners, while doing no more rigorous labor than the control group, died sooner than their counterparts. The monotony, the fruitlessness of their labor took too great a toll on their will to live. They literally died of boredom.
My beer was nearly half-finished and the battle had yet to be waged, for sadly, my task was daunting. Surely mowing the lawn was not the great undertaking that I had made it out to be – certainly not the stuff of Auschwitz. In fact, I quite liked the look of the yard when it was short, trim, and clean. It was next week that bothered me. Next week it would look exactly the same as it did now, and I would be sitting on the same stoop drinking the same beer, cursing the same people for my recurring predicament, staving off death by tedium.
The temptation to surrender was overwhelming. I could leave it be. I didn’t use the yard anyways, except as a dog pen. Too hot to grill. Too small to entertain company. I kept a single chair on the walk to stargaze when the temperature dipped below blistering. I could just let the grass grow, content to watch out the kitchen window as my wiener dog cut traveling paths through the dense foliage to his favored dumping grounds.
I could not, however, survive the scowls, the stares, and the penetrating glares of my fellow sub-development dwellers. Two weeks’ worth of growth would call down a torrent of such ill-favored expressions from the many residents who prided themselves on fine lawns and finer gnomes. Three weeks would leave me at the mercy of the homeowners’ association and their dastardly fines; for aberration is not tolerated in Green Gables. Each home must resemble the next – each fence a pearly white, each porch chair whicker, dog groomed, paint vibrant, music low, parties civilized, children tamed, flag flown, and order maintained for block after block after block until you have completely forgotten how you ever entered into such a counterfeit world, nor could you ever remember how to leave it.
A woman in her mid-forties came down the road behind my house as I tipped my bottle back for its last drop of ale. She was dressed in a white shirt of some spandex material, with pink shorts and black sunglasses. She pushed a stroller along at a determined pace, no doubt on a mission to achieve her ideal weight before official bathing suit season came into full swing.
She turned her head in my direction for a moment.
“Hello, ma’am,” I said with a smile and a wave of my empty beer glass.
She nodded, then glanced quickly down at the entangling primeval forest which threatened both her child and her way of life. She quickened her pace and disappeared around the corner without a word of acknowledgment.
With that, I hauled myself to my feet and made for my neighbor’s mower.
B David Larson 
Leave a comment