Ancestral insight

Every so often I have a moment of insight. Granted those moments are spread far apart and happen so infrequently I can barely mention they happen with any regularity without feeling a bit dishonest. For the interest of this story, let's just say it happens a lot.

As I was mowing our lawn I started pondering my ancestral line. Somewhere along the line I am related to Luke Johnson, one of the early leaders of the church. Yeah, the relationship is quite distant as you can easily determine.

I thought about the statement I have often heard thrown around that the early pioneers of the church would not trade their struggles with ours despite our seemingly endless supply of luxuries and advances in technology. I came to an understanding regarding this. I imagined myself leaning over the lawnmower detaching the bag and preparing to dump it in my green waste garbage can. my attention is drawn to a small bright light gathering in the middle of the air, near my driveway. The light grows brighter. bursts of light rays begin shooting out as if testing the area around. Small sparks emerge and flutter around and fade out. The light grows and opens up revealing a figure dressed in old style clothes. He steps out of the light as it closes behind him with thump, like a cork stopping up a bottle "thoomp!" The figure walks briskly toward me with a warm smile and offers his hand.

"Greetings! I am Jedediah, I am from the past. I have come here to inspect the doings of my children's, children's, children's, children's, children's... er what people of the future do to earn their keep"

Me: Welcome to the future! feel free to look around and ask me anything you want!" I wipe the grass off on my shorts and offer him my hand.

Jeb: Very well! May I ask sir, what you are doing?

Me: I am cutting my lawn

I explain proudly

Jeb: Your... lawn? You mean this lush grass?

Me: Yes. I use my lawnmower to cut it

Jeb: How do you keep it so green?

Me: I apply fertilizer and fluids that choke out weeds. I water it and pull weeds. I trim it back and gather up all of the clippings and aerate it.

Jeb: I am rendered nearly speechless! how do you water it?

I show him the sprinklers and show him how I turn them on. He jumps back like he has seen an evil apparition.

Jeb: You can make rain whenever you want?

Me: Well... yes, except it turns itself on at night with this timer, except I have to tell it how long I want it to stay on.

Jeb: Marvellous! And you use this Lawn harvester to "cut" it?

Me: Yup.

I start the lawn mower and he hides behind me in fear.

Jeb: Are you not frightened of this machine that howls like a thousand angry bears?

Me: No, it is just the engine... it's the exhaust... because the gasoline is burn... It is magic.

Jeb: This is astonishing! where do you find this fertilizer?

Me: I just go down to the garden store and buy it. It only costs $15-$30 a bag.

Jeb: Great gopher goblins! That is more money than I made selling my house when I moved out west!

Me: Ha! Ha! Ha! good one! Oh... you were serious. I was... never mind. Perhaps you would be interested in seeing my horseless carriage. It can go as fast as 2 miles per minute. Some of these are built to go 5, 6, 7 and some as much as 8 miles per minute.

Jeb is now speechless, his mouth is now dangling wide open, his jaw slowly moving up and down. His eyes wide open like he was staring at death right in the eyes.

Me: You like that huh? Well remember that trip you made across the plains. Took you 6 months, you lost most of your family and you lost all of your possessions on your trip? Yeah, I can go back East in less time than it would take you to walk from one end of this valley to the other in a mechanized tube that shoots through the air 30,000 feet above the surface of the earth.

Jeb, still speechless and growing pale.

Me: Pretty neat huh?

Jeb: Indeed! So amazing in fact, I nearly soiled my trousers! Next you are going to tell me that you have some sort of machine that can automatically clean those! But I digress. Do tell me kind sir, if you spend so much time away from your family and money that you have labored so diligently for to produce such a marvellous crop of grass. Surely, you have some wonderful purpose and design for your harvest. Do tell me what you do with this grass that you have gathered so curiously into this bin?

Me: Well, I put it in this can, that is called a garbage can and it gets hauled away. Probably gets used as compost or something.

Jeb: Hauled away? garbage? Compost? Surely you don't mean discarded as refuse?

Me: Well, sort of. I mean, I have to pay for them to come take it away. And I think they use it for... compost.

Jeb: You pay to have it removed?

Me: Oh yeah! some people pay other people to come and cut their lawn and take it away so they don't have to. Well, if you don't the city will fine you.

Jeb: The city will fine you? What about the poor, the elderly, the widowed, the infirm?

Me: Yeah, they have to keep their lawn green and cut too... or they get fined.

Jeb: If you will please excuse me, I think I have grown ill. I must go back to where I came from so that I can destroy the time machine that I invented so that no one will ever know of how deranged and maniacal the people of the future have become! Please! Speak to me no more of your magic harvesters, your devil drawn carriages your mystical flying tubes in the heavens! Your damned green lawns! Cease your crazy talk!

and with that he disappeared with a giant flash of light.

It was then that I realized the carb on the lawn mower was leaking fuel and I was catching huge gasps of raw gas. I really need to fix that.