Yesterday morning I made a decision that very well could have cost me my life. Do you remember the woman, Dana Colwell, who's Wonderbra saved her from a flying shard of metal as she mowed her lawn? Well I didn't yesterday morning as I threw on my shirt sans brassiere,-- a liberated woman!--headed off to work, and proceeded to whack for five hours on end.
Maybe you're unfamiliar with the Weed Whacker, let me introduce you. The Weed Whacker is a long metal pole with a little motor on one end and a "blade" (two plastic cords) on the other. There are two handle bars and as you whack, you gas the throttle on the right handle bar to make the blades rotate. The rotating blades whack grass and other weeds like a lawnmower but the lightness of the machine allows for detailed work.
It's a wonderful machine, a modern-day scythe, and anybody who's put some time in with one will tell you about the euphoric trance that ensues with use. Comparable to "runner's high," the Weed Whack trance generally sets in right about when your arms go completely numb from the vibrations and begin to feel as though they might simply fall off. Simultaneous to the numbed limbs, comes the shooting pain between your shoulders as the weight of the contraption slowly (but surely) embeds the padded strap deep within your muscle tissue. By this time it is generally mid-day and as the temperature within the insulated helmut and ear-muffs reaches approximately 115 degrees fahrenheit, the gates of nirvana swing open.
All that matters in the world is the annihilation of the green stuff. You are one with the blade, one with the hum, tantric joy with each exploded thistle! Occasionally you look up from your endeavors, astonishingly, the world goes on; the turquoise sky, presumably birds whistle but you cannot hear, you do not care, sweat drips down your sunburn, rocks and shards of sticks fly up and bounce off the mesh face-guard like shrapnel hitting a wall! Ha ha, how futile, you know, for the moon is waxing and the weeds will rise again. But for now you're the boss, you're the Whacker, you'll show those weeds!
Or they'll show you, as I found out, most painfully, mid-trance yesterday. While progressing slowly through a dense patch of wild grasses, a metal screw shot upward and took lethal aim at my heart. Had I, like Dana Colwell, been prudent enough to armor myself in Maidenform, I might have avoided the pain, and certainly the gash, of metal screw piercing Areola.
Today I'm going to "get right back on that horse," as they say. But I will go to work prepared; wearing a bandage on my damaged breast and over that my most padded-bra. Maybe I'll put a bandage on the other breast too for good measure and for the sake of symmetry-- like medical-themed pasties, tee hee!