13 Mar Raking A Difference
Martha Wegner discovers that when it comes to gardening, two’s competent but three’s a clown.
It was the kind of day we dream about when we think of autumn: perfectly cool, the kind of cool that requires a long-sleeved shirt and maybe a hat to keep the dazzling sun out of our eyes. There was just enough breeze to get the leaves swirling gently. Although raking is not necessarily my activity of choice, I was more than happy to get outside and stuff a few garbage bags with leaves. I enlisted my eight-year-old son’s help, with the enticement that I would pay him to help me.
David and I were actually a good little team. I raked, he loaded leaves into bags, I pushed the leaves down, and he tied up the bags. We should have left it at that. But David got it into his head that his friend Michael ought to get in on the deal. I told him that that would be fine. After all, we would get the work done faster if we had a third worker. I told David that he could call Michael, and to ask him to bring a rake with him. Michael reported for duty within minutes. The first sign that maybe this would not go according to plan was the absence of any type of gardening tool in his hands.
There is an old saying that I heard recently and it goes something like this: ‘One boy is half a man, and two boys are nothing’. I hadn’t understood its meaning until this day. What had been a pretty efficient team effort quickly disintegrated into a couple of boys playing in the leaves, with a mother screaming, “Get out of the leaves! Don’t throw the leaves into the air, put them in the garbage bag! Watch out! You almost hit me in the head with the rake!” Things went downhill fast from there, with the boys wrestling, laughing and jumping head first into the rubbish bin. Exasperated, I told them that the job was finished and, with a shrug of their shoulders, they dashed off to play elsewhere. I was left raking up the scattered piles of leaves, remembering again why I really don’t like raking very much.
I don’t have any brothers and have yet to understand the dynamics between little boys. My friend Joan has two sons and I told her of my experience with the raking. She responded, “Why do you think I have my sons signed up for so many sports? Any ‘down time’ and they are on the floor wrestling, knocking over lamps, and upsetting the dog.” So it is, in fact, universal. One boy has potential, two or more have the potential for disaster.
My biggest fear is that they will never outgrow it. How do boys grow up to be whole, fully-functioning men unless we raise each of them in solitary confinement? Small wonder we are not succeeding in securing world peace when nearly every country is headed by a grown-up boy. What do you suppose goes on behind closed doors when those boys get together to negotiate?
For now, I am left with my own half-a-man… and half-a-backyard filled with leaves that need to be raked.
