Free Fried & True by Fay Jacobs

day, shortly after Bonnie’s dreams came true and we purchased a tractor to trim the crabgrass, Bonnie came home with an extraordinarily sheepish look on her face.
    After serving me an anticipatory Grey Goose martini, offering me some un-requested canapés and sitting down next to me in an uncharacteristically humble pose, Bonnie said she just HAD to confess.
    â€œWhat????”
    â€œThe only reason I’m telling you this is that I’m sure you’ll hear about it any second. I’m surprised the phone isn’t ringing now.”
    â€œWhat, What?????” I stammered, looking to see if the two dogs at my feet were healthy or if the sky was falling.
    She then described her trip to have the blades sharpened on her pet lawnmower. Apparently this took a day or two and involved leaving the lawnmower at the kennel overnight—I have no idea about this stuff.
    However, upon picking the beast back up and loading it into the truck, as politicians are fond of saying, “Mistakes were made.”
    Suffice it to say, when Bonnie and her mower stopped at a traffic light, Bonnie glanced in her rear view mirror to see her prized mower lurch backward, then fall out of the truck onto the pavement. Good God! If a car had been back there it would have been vehicular mower slaughter. As it was, it was just plain mower slaughter.
    â€œI thought the mower sharpener man tied it down and he thought I tied it down,” Bonnie said, staring at the floor.
    Apparently, the behemoth yard vehicle landed on the pavement on all fours, bounced and returned to earth somewhat splayed, its wheels going east and west, it’s hood cracked and several of its vital organs hemorrhaging fluids.
    A car screeched to a halt behind the mess, and a quartetof young men ran to aid the mortified dyke in distress. They scooped up the machine with most of its parts and hoisted it back into the truck. Bonnie, completely humiliated, having caused a huge traffic back-up, and sure that she was already on candid camera, transported the patient right back to the stunned mower repairman.
    Ultimately, he fixed the thing so it would mow, but cosmetically it’s been a candidate for Extreme Makeover ever since.
    So, what could be a worse, therefore a better, story? Well, my friend the boat captain also owns a riding mower and she lives adjacent to a canal off Arnell Creek. Uh huh. She was going for that last, errant blade of grass, at the very edge of the lawn, by the bulkhead at the water, and…Geronimo!!!!!!!!
    Fortunately it was low tide.
    Fortunately she wasn’t hurt going in.
    Unfortunately this tractor driver is also the owner of a very expensive computerized prosthetic leg.
    Now I have to stop here and tell you how much I admire the captain. She’s made an amazing and audacious recovery from the accident that caused her to own this high-tech kneecap and all that goes with it. She’s able to captain boats, play golf, and do far more athletic things than I can on my own two feet. It’s amazing and wonderful.
    However, the leg is not waterproof.
    That’s right, not only did she drown her $1000 lawn mower, but she shorted out her amazing, golf-enabling, trick knee that costs forty-five times what the lawnmower cost. Euwwwww.
    Thank goodness her mate came running when she heard the scream and the splash, and all was well that ended well. For the driver. The mower was given a decent burial and last I heard, the snazzy prosthetic leg was beeping and blinking like an extra-terrestrial and will probably have to be Fed-Exed overseas for an overhaul.
    Shortly the story will become funny at that house on Arnell Creek, just as Bonnie dumping her mower out of the truck hasbecome humorous in our house (although when she sees this in print, my luck may run out).
    But you know, as I write, Bonnie is outside, riding our poor banged up tractor. It mows a lopsided swath, is missing its hood and one headlight, but like the Energizer