I just used “point” three times in that title. Can you see where? Of course you can. That was a pointless exercise, wasn’t it? And speaking of pointless, I have a bone to pick with our society. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who has noticed the fruitlessness of a few of our most practiced chores, and I want to spread the word so that next time while you’re mowing the lawn, blowing / shoveling the snow, or raking the leaves, you can mumble and grumble to yourself in angst exactly like I do.

You see, I’m still in winter break. Yeah, that’s right suckers, I’m not back at school (reason being that I’m studying abroad for the next two quarters, but that’s not really important right now). My winter break home is the wintery wonderland of the midwest, where snow is our rain and dry skin is a normality. I will admit, though, that this winter has been snowier than most, and we’re experiencing about two-three snowshowers a week. This wouldn’t be all that bad. You can sled, skid your car into ditches, and have an excuse to drink cocoa, but because every time it snows we need to shovel or snowblow, it is all that bad.

Let me explain. There’s this additional little problem called “below freezing.” From what I hear, Seattle experienced this this winter break, so you probably know what I mean. Anyway, after a few hours of snow being on the ground, it freezes. It also piles up, and our snowblowers can only do so much, so here’s where us human beans come in. We must snowblow (or shovel, for those stuck back in the the seventeenth century) every time the snow is at like 3 to 4 inches. If we don’t, then people walk on it or it freezes and our snowblower won’t properly function. Then we move to shoveling, and if it’s too frozen, our shovel won’t be able to get the snow and we need to pour salt on it and wait, but before it’s melted, chances are it will snow again, defeating our whole effort.

With all that said, my question is why do we even put up with this? It’s so frustrating doing something when our work is going to be erased within moments time. I vote that we all should cozy up, stay in, and the whole world should shut down whenever it snows. Okay, that may be a little crazy, but I don’t think you’ll find my resolution for mowing the lawns quite as unreachable.

I’d like to find the guy who invented lawn mowing. Mowing a lawn is BY FAR the most idiotic, pointless, waste-of-time task conjured by the human race. Why do we mow our lawns? Because it looks good. Why does it look good? Because some genius decided to make it a trend decades ago. We would all love the way overgrown grass looks if cut grass hadn’t been introduced to us, and in turn we would have the following:

1)    Wouldn’t have to buy lawn mowers.
2)    Wouldn’t have to buy gas for lawn mowers and would be helping the environment.
3)    Wouldn’t have to mow our lawn for purely superficial purposes to look good in front of our neighbors.
4)    Wouldn’t have to spend an hour in hot and sticky humidity, monotonously walking back and forth on our lawns pushing a machine.
5)    Wouldn’t have to pay people to mow our lawns when we get too old or lazy.
6)    Less mowing related deaths (I’m sure it happens).

Now I know you may be saying, “But grass would grow too high!” Yes, grass grows somewhat high, but it’s never too tall. We already have sidewalks and walkways, so we have places to walk. We already have driveways for our cars. We’d be fine and would have one less thing to worry about. But alas, it’s too late because we’ve all experience a mowed lawn once, and now we can’t get enough.

My last beef is with raking leaves. Again, little satisfaction, as there are always more leaves to fall. Why can’t we let them sit on our lawns? Sure, it’ll kill some grass, but honestly, is it that big of a deal? I’m sure it will grow back anyway. And if it doesn’t, well then that solves our tall grass problem. We can revert back to our childhoods; kids love playing in dirt, so maybe that’s what our species is meant to do. You never know until you try, right?

Ugh. This is all so frustrating. We could be such a more efficient people if we made these minor changes to our ways of life. But I don’t see it happening. Why? Because we’re stubborn and ruthless. Ruthlessly stubborn. Argh. Well, at least one good thing has come out of these pointless activities:

“You’re the lawnmower man? well, you’ve certainly changed. I don’t know how you did it, but I approve.”

Well, I don’t approve!