IF: Spent

I spent hours of toil at Old Lady Brown's. She had a yard that was long enough to drive golfballs. She must have been 80 years old when I knew her, but she still wanted that huge yard mowed. It was the first time I experienced heat exhaustion, when the grass below my feet looked like rippling water, and was floating above my body as it slogged that mower through the knee-high grass. She never sharped the blades of her cheap sears push mower.

OLB often called on the phone without a "Hello" - she would bleat out my dad's name "Steve??!", forcing the person on the receiver-end to yank the phone away from their head with the sonic blast. My brother's reminded me of her constant interjection of "am I right?" after every statement, as her false teach clickity-clacked with the syllables.

She was a grand old girl. White hair from the age of 18 - timelessly old.

Oh yeah... after mowing for $2.75 an hour, I had to walk 5 miles home because my mom wouldn't pick me up.

My dad volunteered me to be her "mower"... years of obligation... thanks, dad.

Corporal Punishment Series - Old Lady Brown
pencil, photoshop, Cintiq. 11 x 17 inches