Oh and I cant even attempt to begin to even try to explain how that little piece of fucking shit, no-name lawn mower was the center of my dads pathetic, awful, dismal little universe. Besides being bowel looseningly loud and billowing waxy black smoke and soot and making this sickly coughing and wheezing and stalling type of sound whenever it encountered grass that was tall and thick enough to actually need to be cut, besides all those neighbor attention grabbing scenarios, it was constantly just shutting itself off and, in essence, throwing its hands up and saying Enough! and just quitting. Then my dad would attack it with a pair of locking pliers, some washers he found in the bottom of my brothers pencil holder and a feeble, dainty little rock hammer I had swiped from my Earth Science class, and would spend the next three or four days, lying on a greasy sheet of cardboard, in the middle of the driveway, with his shirt off, right smack dab where everyone who had the courage and intestinal fortitude to even glance over towards our yards direction could see and witness the insanity. He obviously had no clue and would just start loosening any nut or bolt or screw that was within easy reach as he laid there, shirtless, in his shorts, sprawled out on the cardboard. When he would finally do enough further irreversible damage that, he in no way, had any chance of being able to undo, he would have to predictably bring it to the lawn and tractor place up by all the farms. The poor man who would wander out to the parking lot and see us standing there by our obviously worthless pile of fucking junk, would look at us in such a puzzled way, as if my dad had a little dollop of dog-do on the very tip of his nose. Thats exactly how he would look at him. And when he got tired of trying to rationally and patiently explain that it literally made no sense whatsoever to spend $180 fixing a $40, when brand new, lawn mower and that it would take six weeks to track down such an obsolete part in Korea or Vietnam or Laos or wherever the fucking thing was made, he would be eventually forced to have some raised eyebrow, confused, dejected looking mechanic wheel the thing away. Just the way he would hand my dad the receipt or claim ticket or paper thing should have been bad enough but when, eventually, my dad would call five or so days later, nowhere near the clearly stated and painstakingly explained six weeks that the man had tried to dissuade my dad with, whoever answered the phone would inevitably basically have no choice but to hang up on him, it was just too much. I really wish he didnt always send me to go pick it up either and make me therefore have to wheel the thing out to our awful car in front of what seemed like all the store employees and their families and relatives who gathered outside to see who the asshole was. There was what seemed to be 80 or so people all staring and whispering as I struggled to get the thing into the trunk. Well, maybe not 80, but still.