My son, John, calls every Sunday morning. If his number shows up on my phone at any other time, my heart stops, thinking there must be an emergency in his household. The same thing happened when he called a second time on Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

It wasn’t an emergency, just an exasperation. He was having “one of those days” where nothing was going as planned and, if it could go wrong, it did.

Buying a new house a couple of years ago necessitated buying a new lawnmower for the “south forty.” They have a double-sized lot that’s turned into an obstacle course for mowing. Between my daughter-in-law’s gardens and gardens-in-progress and the swimming pool and the trampoline and whatever else Jordyn the Gypsy has taken outdoors, John’s mower tracks look like a treasure map drawn by a drunken pirate.

It’s been an extraordinarily wet year in Western Massachusetts, so, if the lawn isn’t mowed every week, it will be as high as an elephant’s eye before a second weekend comes around. It was nothing less than a catastrophe when one of the power wheels on the mower began to wobble. John tightened the assembly gently only to have it repeat wobble on the next pass. When he tried to fix it again, the whole thing fell off: the nut appeared to have been stripped. 

So, John took it back to the big box store where it had been purchased. No, they do not effect repairs: they only sell the mowers plus extended warranties. But you can send it back to the manufacturer. On planet Jupiter. Or maybe they can recommend a repair person in Tulsa. 

John lucked out: there was a repair shop locally that could fix the mower. If the manufacturer could send the parts.

Two weeks later, John picked up the mower, all costs paid for by the original guarantee and no thanks to the additional $185 warranty. John noticed that the replaced wheel was slightly larger than the original on the other side but they assured him that it wouldn’t make a difference. Now, John had taken a few engineering classes but, oh, well. Just maybe.

He started across the lawn with the repaired mower. The wheel fell off. He picked it up, threw it across the lawn just as Joy was coming down the porch stairs to ask if he’d like some iced tea. The wheel missed her by inches. He didn’t get any iced tea. She may be speaking to him by now, but she wasn’t at the time he called.

Most of my mother’s “very bad days” began in the kitchen. Only occasionally did they end with the fire trucks screaming down the street. Like the day mom’s friend invited her to go to Espanola (a distance roughly the same as from Monte Vista to Alamosa) and “they’d be right back.” While the eggs intended for dying before Easter boiled in the pan atop the stove. You’d be amazed at how far pieces of egg will travel when those little bombs explode!! And the smell of eggs burned at Easter will last until Labor Day. Until you can burn some more for the potato salad.

If you’re lucky, the entire day isn’t ruined by one catastrophe and you can go on to find some humor in it by the time you’re old enough to tell it over coffee at the Senior Center.