(Based on a lady I saw mowing a yard)
She sits on a riding lawn mower, the sun shining on her wind-mussed, streaked golden hair. One hand grips the steering wheel. The other holds a cell phone pressed hard against the side of her head. The phone has molded her ear so perfectly it could be used to identify her if she ever left it at a crime scene, which is unlikely, since she even showers with it.
In fact, the relationship this lady has with her phone is more intimate than the one she has with anyone she knows, which is ironic, since she got the phone to better connect with friends.
It’s so bad it intrudes on every activity:
“Hi Jan.”
“Oh hi. What’s that noise?”
“I’m mowing the yard.”
“What?”
“Mowing the yard.”
“What?”
“I’M MOWING THE YARD.”
“Oh. What’s up?”
“Not much.”
“What’s that?”
“Not much.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“NOT MUCH.”
You get the idea.
The affair began innocently enough. A phone display spoke to her as she walked past a Verizon store, throwing an electronic lasso around her neck and pulling her in, an entirely inappropriate move, since she was already in a committed relationship with T-Mobile.
But such is modern phone-industry love. Verizon whispered sweet nothings about how easy it was to leave her current carrier and how she could get the phone of her dreams for free and . . .
She didn’t hear any of it, of course, because love is blind and, in this case, deaf.
Love dulls the senses it doesn’t need and supercharges the ones it does. What it subtracts from sight and hearing, it dumps into the landfill of feeling. Feelings spread fast, bypass reason entirely, and when they reach the brain, they strangle it quietly and efficiently.
So the blinded, deafened lawn-mowing lady—her sense of reason neutralized by a glossy image of a glamorous model holding the latest iPhone—threw caution to the wind and signed an exclusive contract to be with her new love forever, or until the minimum two-year obligation with Verizon gets fulfilled, whichever comes first.
And now she has to mow yards to pay for it.
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