Saturday morning noise

 A lawnmower a couple of doors down distracts my writing, I mean, who cuts grass at seven in the morning? Probably a kid doing chores he forgot to do yesterday. I guess I'll have another cup of coffee and glance through the morning paper to see who's killing who and other tidbits of news that go in one ear then out the other. I set it down and looked out of my kitchen window at the kid barely tall enough to get a grip on the lawn mower, cussing under his breath, leaving me to wonder what he did to deserve this so damn early on a Saturday morning. Then I saw his dad on the porch with a glass of something, he handed to his kid, who drank it down in a couple of gulps and handed the glass back to his dad, who I thought was going to relieve him of the lawn cutting, but he walked back inside, and the kid kept mowing.

As I sat looking at him, my writer's mind went to work, trying to figure out what led to this early-morning chore. Maybe he hit his younger brother or stole some change from Mom's cookie jar. Maybe he skipped school and got caught or found behind the house smoking a cigarette he stole from his dad's pack. I don't suppose I'll ever know the reason, but at last the noise sputtered out, meaning he ran out of gas. I said a quick prayer; he didn't have any gas left in the can and would have to make a trip to the gas station to fill it up. But no such luck, as he retrieved the can from the garage and filled the damn thing up.
I'd have to say the kid kept going until every blade of grass was cut, and he shut down the Saturday morning monster that invaded my ears and my brain. Truth be told, the silence that eluded me seemed eerie as I kept waiting for some other distraction to prevent me from writing. But nothing did. I tried to be creative, but my paper was blank, along with the imagination that usually didn't disappoint me. Then, without warning, the sound of a couple of my neighbors cutting their lawns, and, as if in harmony with each other, the dueling machines roared to life, invading my ears again. Well, there was just one thing to do, so I got dressed and went to my garage where my 1947 Harley-Davidson sat covered with a tarp. It was illegal as hell with straight pipes that could wake the dead when throttled up. I backed it out onto my driveway and, with a sinister plan, started it up. Almost instantly, kids started screaming as windows rattled and birds flew away to safety. People stood on their porches screaming over the noise, telling me to stop or they'd call the cops, who I knew would take a good twenty minutes to show up. which they did and told me to shut it off or take a ride to the station. I wholeheartedly agreed to go with them. Once in a cell by myself, with the only noise being my own breathing, I continued to write the next best seller that came with coffee and silence.

Mike  2026