The Wacker

I’m wet and tired.
Although my underwear is wet, that’s not the point of origin. The wetness came from rain.

It’s usually hot and dry here in Sept. The rain came because I planned to rent an expensive piece of equipment to finish a big outside project that should have been finished a long time ago. I heard it raining this morning. I saw it raining this morning. I felt it raining this morning. Yet I still went to my summer home (the Home Depot) and rented a plate compactor, called (get this...) the Wacker.

A plate compactor is not a particularly big piece of equipment, and it only weighs enough to crush 5 or 8 bones, as opposed to all 206. So, my male brain told me that I could just bebop back to the house, unload this little beast from the trailer, compact my soon-to-be front yard, load it back up, return it to the Depot, and be back in time for tea.

I was never a good student of history. There are exactly ZERO examples from my life to indicate this would be successful.

I mud-wrestled the plate compactor to the job site, swam over to the shed for some ear protection (it was raining hard by this point), swam back, and pulled the starter cord on the Wacker.

I have a little experience with pull-start engines, and I know for a fact that the cord is supposed to wind back into the thingy. If it doesn’t go back into the thingy, there will be no wacking.

I stood in the rain and looked at the cord in my hand for a few minutes. I got on my knees and asked the thingy to suck the cord back up… pretty please. I tried to push the cord back into the thingy. I made wind up noises to get the thingy in the mood. Eventually I reasoned that the thingy did not want the cord. I called Home Depot and the nice lady told me that the only person in the Milky Way who could help me with the thingy was on a lunch break and would be back by Thanksgiving, give or take a few months. I thanked her for her cheerful message of doom, hung up, and got out a 10mm socket wrench and took the thingy’s head off.

A chunk of metal fell out, and at the same time the thingy wound up the cord again. I bolted the thingy’s head back on and pulled. This time the engine started, without the metal chunk and everything! But I was afraid to turn it off. I kept thinking that the chunk of metal was probably important, and my time with the Wacker was limited. Even after I finished compacting my soon-to-be yard, I started looking for things to compact before I had to turn it off. Dog toys, dog poo, plants, bugs… whatever.

When I got back to Home Depot, I created a new puddle at the rental counter while I dug the hunk of metal out of my pocket. I was expecting orange-aproned Will to do a proper examination with requisite "Mmmm" or "Jimminy Crickets, you're lucky to be alive!", but the guy didn't even look at it. He took it from me, threw it into the trash can, and insisted that I have a good day.

By the way, dry underwear is AWESOME.