Times Change and Stuff Happens

by Pa Rock
Mowing Fool

Lately I have been walking a lot.  I have one of those step-counters that is worn on the wrist, and for the past eighteen days I have done a minimum of 10,000 steps per day.  I used to do that amount fairly regularly in every season but winter, but after my hospital stay in late June this year, my energy was zapped and about 5,000 steps a day was the best I could do – but by the end of July I was back!

Two things slow me down on walking.  If I am on the road, it becomes much more difficult to hit 10,000 because so much of my day is spent in the car – and, if I am mowing, usually in two-hour stretches, that also takes away from time when I could be hoofing it.

Yesterday, after two hours on the mower in the blazing sun, I spent about thirty minutes on the computer cooling off – and then decided to head down to the walking trail at the local park.  I grabbed my wallet and keys, but when I reached for the cell phone, it wasn’t where I had expected it to be.  After a quick search of the house and car still failed to turn up the cell phone, I began to really be concerned.

I thought that the missing phone had been in the pocket of my shorts when I started mowing, but I was fairly sure it could not have fallen out – because I generally mow in the same attire, and it had never fallen out before.  I emailed my son in Kansas City and asked his to call me at various intervals on the off chance that I might hear the phone, and then I waited in the house for a few minutes but heard nothing.

I decided to go outside and walk some of the large amount of area that I had mowed earlier in the afternoon. I was getting close to the barn when I heard a faint sound of ringing.   I backtracked a little and the sound became clearer – it was my phone! I found it in the grass in a section that I have already searched.  I answered the phone, thanked Tim for the assist, and headed off to the park where I added 4,000 steps to my daily total!

I have been mowing for around sixty years.  If somebody had told me way back during the Eisenhower administration that I would one day lose a telephone while I was mowing, I would have doubted that person’s sanity.  

But times change and stuff happens.

And old people still lose their shit!