Life Is Funny: 1-2-3 What?

By Alan

Ordinarily my wife would be writing this post. But since this LiF is largely at her expense, even though she caused it, it seemed appropriate for me to write it.

Every spring and fall, we have a day when try to replace the old mulch in our flowerbeds with new mulch. This involves picking up all the falling sticks (a lot after this winter's blizzards), pulling the weeds, raking up the old mulch into several large piles. We have access to a trim little trailer with high walls that can help us haul away the old mulch, and truck in fresh, new, stinky mulch.

There are several methods for getting the old mulch into the trailer. When the levels are low, we can literally push the wheel barrow right up inside, and dump the load. But as the level rises, we have use combinations of wheelbarrows, shovels, pitchforks and hard work to get the trailer full. A technique we started using years ago involves two people grabbing all four corners of a large tarp partially filled with mulch, and together, hoisting the tarp up and over the side of the trailer, dumping the contents inside.

We've done this hundreds of times over the years, invoking the age old method of synchronizing our motions. Someone chants "Ready?  1-2-3" then we lift with perfect timing. All the elements of this chant are useful bits of information. The speed of the chant can represent how fast or slow the lift is going to be. The words can have more or less rhythm giving clues about how far the throw should go. Pitch or tone can even give the nuance of who needs to lift more than the other. I would give an extra twist of the tarp on the count of ONE. I'd tense my muscles at the count of TWO. I'd bend at the knees at the count of THREE, and hoist away after that. A tilt of the head, a note in the voice, like a well refined, well practiced motion, perfectly synchronized, like the tango or a waltz.

We prepared for the first lift of the year. She asked "Ready?",and I grunted in the affirmative. She started off:

"1-2-3 WAIT WAIT WAIT!!"

I nearly fell over with the sudden unexpected strain of picking up the entire ton of mulch by myself. 1-2-3-What??!!?

What part of a waltz is "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT?" Entire orchestras would have fallen over with the broken rhythm.

Of course, laughter ensued. I laughed hard enough to nearly fall over into the tarp, and said, "Well, that's something to remember." I extract myself, grip the corners, and prepare.

She says, "Okay, really ready?" Yep.

"ONE-TWO" and she tries to hoist ON "THREE!" Not after THREE. The tarp ended up in the trailer, but not quite evenly.

This was not a good start to the season. But it was a good laugh.

My friend and fellow blogger Wendy at Weight..What? has a fun carnival at her blog called "Life is Funny." Every Monday we talk about something in life that we find funny. Be sure to go visit her blog to read her post along with links to other blogs who are participating.

Comments

[Helen]

Hey, at least she does her share of the heavy lifting...

[MAD21]

I believe my exact words were, "Hold on, wait a second!!" And in my defense, it was because I was dropping my side of the tarp.