I’m not a Lawn Boy, but I own one.

My wife and I have two lawn mowers — hers and hers. The lawn is too big for scissors. We have a riding mower so we don’t have to push. We have a push mower for when we suffer from rider’s block. The push mower gets to what the rider cannot — like one of those razors with multiple blades. Each mower has a GPS device. It’s a big lawn with many turns. I wish grass wasn’t so mowable. I like a friendly lawn with grass tall enough that it waves at everyone. When I mow the lawn, I try to make it look like an accident.

My wife said that the lawn had tested positive for dandelions and we needed to get the mowers into fighting shape.

I used to know how to do that. I had to do things like that. I worked on tractors, cars, trucks, combines, ammonia refrigeration units the size of Rhode Island (Rhode Island is the size of Rhode Island), various farm implements like manure spreaders (not affiliated with any political party), Boeing 747s, and lawn mowers. OK, I lied about the Boeing 747s, but I did turn a wrench on all the others.

Then I regressed to the point where I knew how to fix things, but I didn’t want to. Then I stopped doing repairs and slowly forgot how. My mechanical skills are now as thin as a fingernail.

We’ve had a series of guys who knew what they were doing and could do repairs without needing to visit the emergency room. I recognize and appreciate the talents of a good mechanic. It’s an art. I could always find someone who knew more than I did. It was impossible to find anyone who knew less. These guys were my mentors. They encouraged me with such helpful comments as, “Get away from that hammer, Al. You don’t know anything about machinery.”

I hoped that I would remember how they did things because I could no longer find one of those guys. I would have hauled the mowers to someone who knows what he’s doing, but someone borrowed my trailer—on a permanent basis.

“You know what I’m thinking?” I pondered aloud.

“That you don’t have a clue as to what you’re doing?” replied my wife, The Queen B.

She’s good.

I did something that no manly man should do. I read the owner’s manual. It didn’t help. The owner’s manual that came with the riding lawn mower was for the wrong engine.

I changed the oil and the oil filter. Not without some difficulty. There was gnashing of teeth and questioning of the mower’s ancestry, but the job was done. I poured oil into the hole labeled with the image of a gravy boat. I read the dipstick. It wasn’t a page-turner, but I was Lawn Boy.

Then there was a bump in the road.

The mower wouldn’t start. After I had given it the best hours of my life.

I checked the spark plug. It appeared disinterested. I decided the grass leveler needed a new spark plug.

It was a day with the bright sun hitting my eyes like the flash of a thousand cameras. I walked into the hardware store. My eyes had not adjusted to the dim light inside the store.

I yelled, “Nobody panic! My lawnmower needs a new sparkplug.”

Someone shouted into a cell phone to another in the same store about a hopeless husband in aisle four and wondered why his wife had let him out of the house.

There was a man, on his hands and knees on the floor, picking up 3-penny nails that he had spilled. I need to make it clear that my eyes had not yet become accustomed to the move from the bright light to the dim. I stepped on the man’s hand. He screamed. That startled me, causing me to jump back and fall into a display of garden seed packets. The packets scattered every direction and I acquired a hitch in my giddy-up.

Once I was back on my feet, I tried to act nonchalant as I stumbled over to the service desk whereupon I tipped over a rack of Phillips screwdrivers.

I bent over, picking up screwdrivers that had rolled to the nearest hiding places. I raised my head and smacked it on a weed whacker that was on sale.

The weed whacker fell to the floor. Luckily, its fall was cushioned by my foot.

As I massaged the growing bump on my head, my eyes made out the outline of the clerk manning the cash register.

“My lawn mower doesn’t work,” I said, trying to maintain my cherubic demeanor.

He responded, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.