Good morning! I am a leaf blower! You’ve probably heard me. Right now, for example. Sure, put that pillow over your head. That should help.
Still here.
I woke you up this morning to clear the air—air filled with particles that always get in your eye, even when you’re, like, fifty feet away and you crossed the street so that this wouldn’t happen. I want to proclaim once again that I am the absolute greatest invention ever, the best thing you humans have come up with, if you don’t count those paper towels where you can take only, like, half a paper towel if that’s all you need.
I am amazing—like an alarm clock, but for the neighborhood. Before me, gas engines had to do real things. I’m your street’s loud, barking dog, but without any of that annoying companionship or protection. I smell like boating, but without the fun part where there’s a boat.
Do you have any idea how hard it used to be to pick up leaves, before I came along? Not very? Shut up. I exist.
Good for the environment? That’s adorable. No, no, I move the environment.
Watch: Here’s a trick where I make you think that I’m all done.
…
…
… And I’m back. I love that trick.
Kids see me and ask the person whose shoulders I’m gracing, “Wow, mister, is that a jetpack?!” And then that person has to be like, “Close, but, well, sort of the opposite.” Then they make a sad face.
Did I mention that I’m a machine that rides humans? Yeah, that’s where I’m at.
You all said, “I would like less shed space.” And others said, “I think nature should be more steampunk.” I know. I heard you. I’m here.
“Oh, fall’s pretty,” you morons all used to think. Then you wised up and were like, “Yeah, but maybe let’s ruin it?”
I’m on it.
Before me, neighbors had to get along, like idiots. There was no way of spraying passive aggression and resentment onto each other’s lawns. And do you even realize that the end of the summer and back-to-school season used to not have a fitting soundtrack, a heinous, droning whine to signal something lovely dying?
You’re welcome.
My origins are cloudy, like a haze kicked up by an unnecessary machine. Some say that I was originally meant just as a device that would keep rats away from dumpsters. Others whisper that I’m the product of a failed comic-book series with a radioactive-anteater/blender love story, that the series tanked but the merch was selling decently, so John Deere picked me up.
It doesn’t matter. All I know is, there was a time when wind chimes had a monopoly on the “Things Neighbors Shouldn’t Have” market. Then I showed up. Showed up because one of you brave souls felt a pleasant breeze and thought, “Yeah, I could do better.”
So here I am. I’m fucking Wind 2.0.
“But surely he’ll only be used for massive, industrial-scale projects,” you told yourselves when I first arrived. Please, have you seen me lately? Your neighbor’s got me going on that mini-golf fairway he calls a side yard. It’s twelve square feet. I’m killing it. I’ve even made my way into the pavement market. That’s right: sidewalks. Once the sole territory of brooms or the occasional hose. Not anymore. “Hello, Mr. Gum Wrapper, I’d like to introduce you to my friend; his name is Two Houses Down from Here. Boom! You live there now.” Ba ha ha! Ha ha!
But seriously, I’m unstoppable.
And don’t I just feel right? Like, since humans first arrived on this planet, hasn’t it all sort of been leading up to the point when you’d be blowing around nature and trash with gas-powered machines that look like cyborg attachments to your bodies? Eh, what do I know? I need my rope pulled to think. All I know is, I don’t take days off. Sunday mornings? Please, I do half my business on Sunday mornings. I’m persistent and loud, like a raised voice when someone has an opinion. And you know what that opinion is? That these leaves right here should go way over there. Whoosh! See ya, leaves.
Oh, and before me, they were called “stays.”
I’m a machine, a doer. I make things happen. I turn “should be awake” into “is awake.” So really, what I’ve got you all up for this morning, all of you in your beds, cursing me, promising yourselves that you’ll write that angry note when you know you won’t, what you need to know is that even if a small group of you complain, it will do nothing. The problem with you humans is that, alone, you’re too timid, and, as mobs, you’re too rash. And you all seem like just-try-to-go-back-to-sleep people anyway. So even if a few of you start gathering—yes, you, in the back—and have a couple menacing pitchforks—O.K., yes, ma’am, yes, I see that you have one, too—what you need to understand is, that’s not going to…
Ha! I’m sorry, sir, but I have to ask, why does your pitchfork look so flimsy, so very sad? And why are its prongs so close together, almost like a…
Oh, God.
Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn.
