I finally understand people who mow their lawn at 8 am. I used to think they were assholes. Why were they doing this so early? Why couldn’t they wait until 9 at least? Do they not realize that other people are trying to sleep? And WHY do they keep stopping and starting the mower like 20 times? If they kept the noise going at least it might act like white noise and others could still sleep. So annoying!

Fast-forward ten years and I discovered the answers to all these questions, while I was mowing my lawn at 8 am. First, they’re not assholes, they just have kids.

Little kids wake up at the crack of dawn with no desire to go back to bed and a complete disregard for their parent’s choices to stay up later the night before. Kids are kind of jerks that way. Those lawn mowing parents have been up, showered, done laundry, cooked, eaten and cleaned up after breakfast and played endless games of pretend. They’re not early. 8 am is practically lunch time to them and they have put this lawn maintenance off as long as they possibly can without jeopardizing naps.

I don’t mean to speak for all of us that mow the lawn at 8 am. From my observations many of us are parents, but I suppose it is also possible that some of those early morning mowers ARE assholes. Maybe they don’t even need to mow the lawn, but decided to do it solely to annoy their jerk neighbours. Why? You know what you did Steve. It’s possible, but more likely they are parents with young kids or teenagers they are trying to annoy. Alternately the lawn mowing maniac could be old and have been up for ages already. Or possibly it’s summer and 8 am is the only time it is bearable to do physical work outside without sweating buckets. But I digress. The point is, they are not assholes. (Except Steve.)

Second, it’s early because they’ve been up for two hours and still nothing is open yet. They can’t run errands or go anywhere and their kids are driving them nuts already. Sure, they could go to a coffee place, but they’ve already had 3 cups of coffee due to the aforementioned early risers terrorizing their house. So, rather than watch one more episode of Peppa Pig, they are out to mow the lawn. This way they get their to-do list done and they can’t hear their kids fighting over the sound of the mower. (Unless they have a push mower. Then they can only partially drown out the whining. Great job with the eco-friendly choice though.)

Finally, they keep starting and stopping the mower because they have to stop and pick up toys every ten seconds. Their kids said they would pick them up, but somehow they are still on the ground. In fairness, the  grass has grown so long that it is possible that the kids just didn’t see the toy in the dense undergrowth of the back yard. It is also possible the kids started picking up toys and then decided to run in circles singing instead. Anyway, the point is that parents have to mow their lawn cautiously because if not they will be shredding toys left and right. So, they stop the mower to pick up the toys, and possibly to question their life choices.

So, mystery solved! People who mow their lawn at 8 am are not assholes, they just have kids. Also nice lawns – they have those too.