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.
No way man lmaooo. LeBron was asked about Texans DE Will Anderson Jr after the game:
“That’s my 4th child. Him and Bronny are twins and nobody knows it. Me and Savannah been trying to keep it under wraps for a long time.”
😂😂😂