Battery-powered yard tools have made me a better human but much angrier dad

Battery-powered yard tools have made me a better human but much angrier dad

Posted on July 20th, 2022 by Scott Warnock

A few years ago, because she wanted me to cut something down and my gas chainsaw was decrepit, my wife bought me a battery-powered DeWalt chainsaw. For my limited purposes, its battery oomph works great.

Last year, I added a battery-powered DeWalt lawn mower. Suddenly, including the hand-me-down battery-powered weed whacker I got a few years ago, I’m close to green landscaping!

A general side effect of battery and electric power is you get metrics, even simple ones like the three little green power indicators on the lawnmower. There’s no doubt this information has made me a better fellow traveler on our planet.

Now, as I mow my grass (and I’m even working to rid myself of this grass and go for natural landscaping to be even more eco friendly), I’m determined to get it all done–front, sides, and back–before the batteries drain. Where I would once make these neat, (spouse-pleasing) angular rows, I now hustle. I make wide, curvy turns instead of hairpins. My mowing is eddy shaped.

I mow faster. I’m more in tune with the world.

(In moments of mid landscaping despair, I reflect on the gas I wasted during past gas-powered lawn cuttings.)

But all good things have a revenge effect, and now I have a new kind of strife–family strife. More than ever, I’m on my son to “cut that there grass right!”

This draconian lawn-cutting oversight I engage in is a perfect breeding ground for passive-aggressive male child behavior. He pushes the button and pulls the lever. From there, he lollygags. He saunters. He strolls.

I watch him pausing in a state of dreamy oblivion and making these sharp, time-consuming, double-back turns. I grow exasperated. I know what those little green lights are doing.

I bully. I fulminate. I yell.

I eventually use my latest go-to line of disdain, going for the jugular on my soon-to-be Drexel University student. I let him have it: “And you’re going to be a civil engineer?!” I sneer the last two words, knowing full well he can hear me because of the purr-like quiet of the battery mower.

To his credit, he is unfazed. He feels not flogged nor stunned by my verbal fusillade but in fact stumbles through it as he continues his wasteful landscaping.

And he gets his vengeance… the battery lights dim from 3, to 2, to 1.

He’s not even finished the backyard, and the mower is out of juice. Kaput. I howl in anger.

For Father’s Day, my wife got more batteries. (Surprise!)

So now when the batteries die, he calmly goes in, has a lemonade, and gets the replacement packs. He’s in the house for hours, maybe weeks.

While I seethe.

It is not lost on me that now even my rage is battery powered.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.