Neither a Lender or a Borrower Be
Me and my buddy Clyde were sitting up at my deck on a nice summer afternoon this year enjoying a cold one and listening to the pesky howl of a lawnmower in the distance down below. Except for the lawnmower it was an idyllic scene. Warm breeze off the Sound, mountains beyond, good conversation, cold beer — about all a South Ender requires of Paradise …
… before Nirvana was shattered by an ungodly scream of metal on metal, a horrific clatter and screech and finally silence. Clyde and I shook our heads. “That doesn’t sound good,” he said. “No, sounds like a John Deere death knoll. Glad it’s not our mower.”
We popped another cold one and counted our blessings. The neighbors could afford a new John Deere. Sure, a bit of an inconvenience, but hey, keep the economy humming, if nothing else. You can’t expect a mower to last forever, right?
About this time we hear footsteps on the stairs and from around the corner here comes Junkie Jeff, my heroin addict deadbeat con-artist no-account who rents the house next door and before we can say ‘whazzup?’ he’s apologizing, didn’t mean to hurt anything, he’ll make it good … and I finally say “STOP! You mean that godawful noise we just heard was MY mower???”
Jeff had borrowed it from my unlocked shed, filled it with my gas without asking and proceeded to run it into a pipe half buried in his lawn where it died a horrible death, spinning blade vs. steel opponent. RIP. “I’ll buy you a new one, really, I’ll replace it, Skeeter.”
From a calm center I replied firmly, “Naw, Jeff, I’ll buy a new one myself. And here’s the deal: you never touch it, you never ask to use it, you never step on my property again, not ever, never. And … I would greatly appreciate you start as of now.” Head hung hangdog low, Junkie Jeff retreated back to his syringe-filled sorry ass miserable excuse for a life with the unmowed lawn and the drawn curtains and his sad dreams of the next fix. “Man,” Clyde said in amazement, “you really let him off the hook.”
“Not really,” I admitted. “This morning I stripped the bolt that holds the blade. The blade is shot. The mower was shot too. I was going to buy a new one this week anyway. Jeff just saved me taking that one to the dump. And … now he’ll never darken my doorway again. He wouldn’t have bought me a mower in a hundred years, trust me. He’s a junkie. A liar. And he’s dead broke. This way, it’s a win-win. Say adios to my buddy Jeff.” Clyde smiled, we returned to our beers and celebrated. The South End — morally uncomplicated.
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