This afternoon around 1:30 PM, I took a break from my grueling work schedule to eat a little lunch. Soon, some food was in front of me, and I was in the living room and ready to watch some HDTV while I ate. My options were limited to Phat Girls, an episode of Charmed, and a Wimbledon recap show. That's how I ended up watching Parenthood, because, you know, I'm no longer ever allowed to think about anything else.

While Parenthood doesn't particularly benefit from the HD treatment, I still enjoyed myself. I watched a few scenes. Then, just as the bit where Steve Martin pretends to be the balloon-animal-making cowboy approached, there was a knock at the door.

I looked through the little eye-height square window. There was a man with sandy-blond hair and a little Chuck Norris mustache. He looked like he'd spent the previous night inside a smokestack. The urban menace had manifested itself yet again.

For some reason, I opened the window.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I see you have a stump on your lawn," he said.

"So?"

"I'm the stump grinder."

"You're what?"

"The stump grinder."

"I don't need a stump grinder."

Twin resentments bubbled in my brain: Of being bothered by yet another random, scruffy door-knocker, and of the incessant lawn-maintenance that plagues my day, both with noise and needlessly burned gasoline. I wouldn't hire someone to do that work even if my lawn were nothing but stumps. I would rather stub my toe every day for the rest of my life than have a working stump grinder outside my office door.

"Don't you want someone to grind your stump?" he tried again.

I closed the window and walked away, muttering to myself. I turned around and looked out the window. The stump grinder was doing the exact same thing. Hah. I thought. I'll get him back. On my blog.

Posted by at 4:01 PM | Permalink