The Lawn Memes Know I’m Becoming My Father, and They’re Not Even Sorry About It

The great Saturday morning war is the heart of all of this, and I’ve fought on both sides, so believe me when I say there’s no resolving it. The sleepers believe the weekend belongs to them. The mowers believe 7 a.m. is when the dew breaks and the real ones ride. Both sides are correct, which is the problem. I’ve been the guy with the pillow over my head composing a strongly worded speech I’d never deliver, and I’ve been the guy on the hill with the engine roaring, feeling something dangerously close to purpose. The engines will always start. The memes exist so the losers of each morning can at least laugh about it.

Then there’s the equipment situation, which I need to talk about, because no hobby on Earth escalates like this one. Nobody buys the reasonable tool. You go in for something to handle a few twigs and come out with a chainsaw sized for a horror franchise, and when your spouse asks why, you say “range.” I saw the fake ad for a Bluetooth cordless hose and my first thought was not “that’s impossible,” it was “how much, and can I get three.” That’s the disease. The tool is too big, the tool is unnecessary, and the tool is absolutely coming home with me.

And can we talk about the trailer thing? Because it’s real. The day you buy a trailer, relatives you haven’t heard from since a wedding in 2011 develop moving projects. Third cousins materialize with a friendly “long time no see” and a couch that needs to go across town. Meanwhile the gig listings describe machete-grade jungle as “a light trim, maybe fifteen minutes,” payment in one water bottle and a lifetime of poison ivy. The lawn is not just grass. The lawn is a society, the society has an economy, and the economy runs on favors and lies.

Here’s my honest theory on why any of us care this much. The world’s problems don’t respond to effort in any visible way. You can work hard all week and see nothing move. The lawn moves. You mow it, and an hour later there’s proof you existed and did something, in stripes, visible from the street. It’s the last place a regular person gets to feel undefeated. The stripes are unnecessary. The stripes are also, and I say this with my whole chest, magnificent.

And every joke in this genre about the dad in white Reeboks is written by someone mid-transformation into him, which is the part that gets me. The mockery is just pre-nostalgia. Today’s sleeper is tomorrow’s 6:45 engine, and nobody escapes. I mocked, I slept in, I judged, and now I stand on my driveway at dusk admiring my own diagonal like it’s the Sistine Chapel. The lawn comes for everyone. The memes are the welcome packet.

The engine is warm. The neighbors are awake. The stripes await.