Rick Froehlich

Sr exec, Consultant, GirlDad, Husband, Long suffering Cleveland sports fan

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

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.

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@CleGuardians Wow. Looked great

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@dasanil @CathyYoung63 So you would be OK with an all black or white cast on a film about the Pakistan/ India war as they split into two countries?

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@BernieKosarQB Glad your better Bernie!

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@MarinaMedvin Not sure what you heard in this response? All I heard was Americas interests have primacy and if those interests align with Israel we will work with them but sometimes Israel and US interests are not the same. Seems simply logical to me

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@houmanasefi @elonmusk 2 hours

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@juanblanco76 38

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@DawgPoundPerry Mike Phipps

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@joethomas73 Wow Joe. Cleveland proud. So close

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@BrownsCanada Dig the cigar

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@MichelobULTRA #Sweepstakes

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@MichelobULTRA #ULTRAPrizeScramble

[Dan Orlovsky @danorlovsky7]

The @Browns are having as good an off-season as any team in the NFL!! #NFLDraft

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

@PFF_Sam Trade OBJ

[GregGutfeld @greggutfeld]

I gotta admit: @dancrenshaw has more tools in his kit than an entire Home Depot. a seamless performance.

[Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11]

One week ago today, Democrats blocked a GOP-led increase in funding for small businesses

Today, that funding ran out.

Democrats could have prevented this

Nancy Pelosi could have saved jobs and lives

Instead she’s in San Francisco not doing her job

She should be embarrassed.

[Steve Harvey @IAmSteveHarvey]

Check me out in the new @Browns 🔥 uniform.

All proceeds from jersey sales go to benefit the Browns “Hats off to our Heroes” fund, which will aid health care professionals, first responders, educational professionals...

[Geraldo Rivera @GeraldoRivera]

#Wapo has legit bombshell indicating the #coronavirus was created by & escaped from a #Chinese lab experimenting on bats,
which means the whole wet market story was just BS cover for a bio-experiment fuckup of epic proportion.

[Rick Froehlich @rick_froehlich]

Anyone who believes climate change will destroy the planet in 12 years but is agains’t using nuclear power has no intellectual leg to stand on