nik newark

Mowers and Milk Hands

Today, I mowed the lawn with our new lawnmower. It is a red Honda, much like our old lawnmower, only newer. The old lawnmower was old (hence the name), so old in fact, that it predates modern lawnmower safety standards. Modern lawnmowers, you see, don't allow the Deadly Rotating Blades to continue to rotate when you are not squeezing the handle, to prevent stupid people from reaching into the mower to unblock it, and having their hands pulped.
The old lawnmower, however, had no such safety feature, so whenever I wanted to unblock it, I'd turn the mower off, detach the spark plug (to prevent the mower from sporadically firing up), turn off the fuel supply to make it extra safe, and even after all of these safety measures, I'd use a wooden stick to unblock the mower. You wouldn't catch me sticking my hand anywhere near a Deadly Rotating Blade, even after it has been rendered harmless.
Today, the grass was long, and a little damp. Accordingly, the mower needed frequent unblocking. However, I was still finding myself a little over-paranoid about unblocking with my hands, even though I knew fullwell that the cunning rotostop clutch mechanism would prevent the blades from moving at all.
Why was this? I've since meditated on the topic, listened to an old self hypnosis tape, and regressed to a particularly traumatic event in my childhood. When I was four, I was playing with an old Flymo, when it suddenly fired up, and chopped my left hand off, just below the knuckle. It took a full 6 months for my hands to grow back (luckily, I still had my milk hands at this stage - my full hands not having yet started to sprout).