This Is A Long (Lawn) One

Spring. It's a wonderful time. A time to enjoy the good things of life. The cool breeze. The flowers. The sound of a lawn mower. There's always at least one person in a neighborhood who seems to think it's important to be mowing their lawn at seven a.m. on Saturday morning. What causes our obsession with lawns? Why do we cultivate a weed in uniformity in front of our houses? Why is that weed, when artificially hacked to a certain length, considered aesthetic? Why do we even care? Because analysis is the first step to getting full credit in English... I mean... the solution.

At one point in time, lawns were not the social norm. People had dirt in front of their homes, or might have planted useful plants. But in the 1800's, a certain Edwin Budding invented the lawn mower, presumably to cut his hair (needless to say, he did not look very good for a couple of months). By the early nineteen hundreds, the USDA and the US Golf Association were gathering in secret government labs to try and see who could spit a watermelon seed the farthest. Wait. I must have read Wikipedia wrong. I meant to say that they were trying to create the ultimate grass type. Naturally, they settled on marijuana. Just joking! Sort of! (You thought Bill Jeff-"erson" Clinton just talked that way cause of his accent) And thus began the modern obsession with lawns. Lawns now constitute the largest irrigated crop in the country, and they can't be eaten, or, usually, smoked!

Society praises those with the best lawns. Gunfights start on the basis of lawns (I once knew a guy who would fly out of his door and yell at us if we stepped on his lawn. He was probably about to shoot us. Naturally, we dared each other to touch it during the long summer days. Nothing like a little bit of blood to excite a boring 21st century day.). Lehi High (We're not sure if this is a reference to the perfect "grass" either) is going to get a new million dollar football field. Their school gets nothing. Why is this? Well, naturally, because the football field is covered in grass! We collectively spray billions of dollars worth of fertilizers and pesticides on our lawns. And then these get into the water supply, creating mutant frogs, which then get dumb books written about them, which get converted into boring documentaries, and, if someone really evil happens to be around, educational video games! Not to mention it probably, like pretty much everything and everyone else except for Al Gore, fosters global warming, which could be catastrophic, except for the fact that the temperature has only gone up .7 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century and a half.

Naturally, I don't approve of lawns. I mean, how could I possibly, considering the fact that the mowers wake me up on Saturday morning, and even force me outside to use one sometimes? It's disgusting that our society has become enslaved by a plant! I say we boycott lawns! I say we rip them out and put concrete in in their places! Or at the very least, huge trampolines! I say we end our slavery to our grass masters once and for all! I say I never have to mow the lawn again! I say no one mows their lawn ever again! So STOP WAKING ME UP ON SATURDAY MORNING!