Saturday Morning

When I was little I remember a little bit of Saturday morning cartoons..."After these messages we'll be right back." Mostly what I remember is yard work. I think that Saturday was always the lawn mowing day. I don't remember when I went from waking up to the sound of the lawn mower to waking up to mow the lawn. I'm amazed that there was so much work around our little house to do.

One Saturday my dad was trimming the hedge between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway. He was clipping it by hand. He had finished the sides and part of the top, but he couldn't quite reach the middle of the top. I was anxious to help because I thought that the giant pair of scissors he was using looked quite fun. My dad came up with a brilliant Idea for how to cut the last part of the bush. He placed a half sheet of plywood (maybe a quarter, it was more like 2'X4') on top of the cut part of the bush. The plan was to then let me sit on top of this board and my small weight distributed over the large piece of wood could easily be held by the bush, right?

Wrong! All went according to plan until the little kid, me, was thrown onto the board. I either didn't understand the concept of try trying to distribute myself or I was too little to do it properly. Whichever one it was meant that the board and I went into a vertical position and I slid right into the middle of the hedge. I was surrounded and stuck by hedge on every side. It was a pretty thick bush and I was pretty trapped. The bush had scraped me too. The only way to get out was for my dad to pull me out of the same hole I had created.

As a note of reflection: My father is a civil engineer. The bush bridge he made that day failed. I wonder if this event had any bearing on my choosing engineering, but not bridges, weapons. Who knows!