Trimming mistake leaves him unscathed (06/07/06)

When it happens, you’re surprised to be alive.

I had the electric hedge-trimmer out the other day, attempting to give our far-too-numerous shrubs a pruning.

Things were going pretty well, though I never trim them back quite as far as my wife would like.

The biggest problems I’d run into were an incredible snarl in our longest extension cord that had me grumbling and wrestling with something that looked like a tangled piece of modern art and the fact that the trimmer itself gets so hot when it’s running that it felt like I was holding a hot cast-iron skillet.

The trimmer isn’t a very good one, and it’s old. Originally, it belonged to my father. Those who knew him will attest that he was never the handiest of handymen. (This was a guy who once squeezed caulk out of a tube by wringing it like a sponge, because he couldn’t figure out how to use a caulking gun. )

But he liked his hedge-trimmer. He bought it when my folks lived in Richmond, and one summer got so carried away with the thing while pruning that my mother called him “The Happy Hacker.”

So this is a piece of equipment that wasn’t very good to begin with and has been around for awhile. My guess is that it’s roughly 30 years old.

All that time, it’s been used without incident.

Until that recent afternoon when I was working on the shrubs.

I’d made some real progress, making it safer to pull in and out of the driveway by increasing the visibility, and was just about ready to call my wife to inspect my labors.

Stepping back from one of the bushes, I lowered the trimmer to my side for a second. And it stopped.

I looked down to find a section of the extension cord caught in the blade.

It’s probably inevitable for anyone who has ever used an electric trimmer, but when it happens, you’re surprised to be alive.

Instead of being electrocuted, you’re simply out of luck. The tool is dead, not the operator.

“Are you OK?” came a call from the house.

“Yeah,” I said. “But I feel stupid.”

My little run-in with the cord had tripped a circuit-breaker in the house, making it impossible for me to keep this little incident quiet.

The only thing that made me feel better was a piece of electrical tape at another spot on the cord. Obviously, I wasn’t the first person to make the same mistake.[[In-content Ad]]