to the men who say, “I’m too scared to even touch a woman in this Me Too era because of the possibility of an allegation.”
GOOD. Don’t touch us. Don’t touch us unless we ask. Live by that. Act by that. We would greatly appreciate it.
I needed my lawn mowed. I asked an American for the name of a company.
He said, "Get a kid."
A kid. Not a service. A child.
I asked which kid.
"Any of 'em."
I asked where one obtains a kid. There is no directory. There is no listing.
He said, "Ask around."
I asked around. Two days later a fourteen year old named Cody was standing on my porch.
He did not bring a mower. Nobody told me this part. The kid uses your mower and your gas. He brings arms.
I asked his rate.
He said, "Whatever."
Whatever. A negotiation had opened and the other party declined to attend.
A blade drawn against no opponent must be returned to the sheath in silence.
I put my wallet away.
So I conducted research. I asked four adults what the correct amount was.
Four numbers. Twenty. Forty. Twenty five. One man said he gave a kid fifty once and could not remember why.
There is no rate. There has never been a rate. An entire national labor market runs with no published price and every participant is somehow satisfied.
I looked up the state minimum wage. I timed the work. I arrived at a defensible figure and I paid it.
My neighbor watched this from his driveway.
Later he came over and told me, kindly, that I had underpaid.
I said the amount exceeded the legal minimum.
He said, "Yeah, but he's a kid."
THE PRICE IS NOT THE PRICE. THE PRICE IS THE PRICE PLUS SOMETHING NO MAN ON THIS STREET WILL SAY OUT LOUD.
So I corrected. I overcorrected. Sixty dollars for forty minutes.
The same neighbor came back over.
"Alright. Don't ruin him."
There is a floor and there is a ceiling. Neither is written anywhere. Both are enforced by men standing in driveways with their arms folded.
The samurai who cannot read the room dies in the room.
I have been dying in this room since June.
Cody was thirsty. I did not offer him water, because he had not asked, and a warrior does not name another warrior's weakness.
My wife told me he is fourteen and it is ninety one degrees. I now leave a bottle on the step where he can take it without being seen taking it.
I asked my neighbor why the whole street does this. Why grown men pay a boy more than the work is worth and then pretend not to have noticed.
He said, "You're not buying a lawn."
Then he went inside, because apparently that was a complete explanation.
Cody has cut my grass eleven times. He is saving for a truck. I know the exact figure because he told me, unprompted, in August, sweating, holding my own mower.
Last week a family moved in three houses down. The man came over and asked if I knew anybody who cuts grass.
I said, "I got a kid."
I heard what that sounded like. I did not correct it.
He is nine hundred dollars from the truck.
A mountain is not asked to be smaller. A mountain is walked around, at night, quietly, by a man with a truck payment he intends to make on someone else's behalf.
I have started mentioning him to people.
@elonmusk The hell 🤣 the article moving around the internet says SpaceX is building a DART mission to strike the moon. Is this what the “fake” video is about?