Funny yard-work story!

Pictures: Rebekah's plants are enjoying a happy summer!

Funny story about mowing the yard. Back-story goes like this: My neighbor is a nurse, and he's always giving me a hard time about the sun."It's not a good idea to mow the grass without a shirt on!" "You really should be wearing a hat!" "The January sun is harsher than most people would think..." that kind of thing.

Well I'm not a huge tanner; never have been never will. I grew up in England where, "Why don't you put this where the sun never shines" actually referred to the entire island. You know, like a synonym: England - aka the U.K. - aka Great Britain - aka Blighty - aka The United Kingdom - aka The British Isles - aka Where the Sun Never Shines...

So anyway, I try to be respectful of my obsessive compulsive "Look out, the death rays will get you!" neighbor - even in light of the fact that he's a heavy smoker and is at slightly more risk than the guy who grew up on a soggy UV-free island, parked against the north coast of Europe.

Consequently, I fired up my lawn mower, waved at him as he climbed in his car, and put on a hat I'd picked up the last time I played golf.

Well, the south side of our house has three Amazon rain trees with a lot of heavy, low hanging branches. I'm walking along behind my Toro, a tad too fast because the drive is broken and I have it hard-wired on "full-speed." I ducked under the first branch, straightened up and - thanks to the wide brim on my hat that put a stop to peripheral vision in the "up" direction - ran full tilt into the next branch without even a nanosecond's warning to slow me down.

I had (in the vernacular of hand-to-hand fighting... or in this case, tree limb-to-head ambushing) my clock cleaned. I was down in an instant, flat on my back with tweetie-birds circling just behind my close-tight eyelids. One witness - a golfer looking over the fence for his ball - said I was walking so fast that, when I hit the branch with my head - my legs literally went straight up in the air and I landed in a Fosbery-flopesque fashion.

So here's the question. How much good did the hat actually do me? Sometimes I wonder how often we create new issues in trying to cover as many safety bases as possible? I like my odds better with my eyes wide open.

OK, there it is. There's the real question. What are we doing to make sure our eyes are wide open?

Peace - DEREK