Slice of life.

I can’t always keep track of things like I used to.

When P. got home from work last evening I was in the back yard sitting on a bench. I had already taken apart the switch for the electric lawn mower but I soon learned that putting it back together required a dynamic effort to fasten a spring on a plastic pin with a lever and electrical connections. All this fit within a plastic case that clamped onto the lawn mower’s handle.
I tried to assemble it five or six times. P. urged me to keep trying, but I knew it was hopeless. I could not imagine how the Chinese, or whoever manufactured it, put it together in the first place. We’ve had the mower almost 30 years! It was made after the cultural revolution in China, I’m almost sure, but I’m not sure that fact has any significance.
I broached the subject of our quarrel yesterday, how I felt stung by her twice shouting at me, “God damn you!” because I had finished off a bottle of wine in the afternoon. Shoot! There had been hardly any left, just a couple of ounces!
She suggested that I hadn’t really accepted her apology, had I?
I admitted that I had felt hurt for some moments with her curses echoing in my head. Actually I sulked until the next day.
Then I asked her if something was troubling her? Was she feeling especially crabby? I can’t remember what she said.
I thought, You know, Mark Fryberger’s mother’s shed has a lawn mower just like the one I took apart. What if I bought it from him?
“Let’s work on the switch later,” I suggested. “Meantime, let’s go out and eat.”