by Sophia Josephina

Created on: June 02, 2008   Last Updated: June 10, 2008

It was the summer of 1980, I was 10 years old and like any typical American girl I hated doing chores. I was "full" of myself and popular in school, so why did I have to do the daunting task of chores. Why? Because my mother told me to.

"Marie", my mother said one day "it's time to clean the yard".
"Oh, lord, did I know what that meant!" It meant not just cleaning the yard- picking up trash, but pulling weeds in the very hot Kentucky sun. "Oh, how I hated being in the hot sun and sticking my beautiful soft hands on the nasty, prickly weeds that grew up in spots where the lawn mower could not go."

I remember how great it would be if only I had a gardening "genie" to help me. I would put him to good use and be done with weed pulling before you could say "bibbty, boppity, boo"!

But I lived in the real world, which I was reluctantly getting to know. So, I slo-o-o-o-wly walked out into the great wilderness of our back yard, hesitating as much as my mother would allow and started pulling big, huge, tall, green, nasty, ugly WEEDS - Uggh! I kept telling my self my mom was a mean person for making her child do this. I just knew this was never going to end.

As I was carrying the weeds back to the ally, I noticed a strange looking machine. It was made of metal, with a long arm on it. I decided it was worth stopping what I was doing and taking a closer look at it. It had a container full of gas in it, with a string at the bottom of this contraption.

Although I didn't quite know what to make of it, I had seen a commercial on TV that looked something like this. The commercial said that it could chop weeds down in a matter of minutes and that was all I need to know I was excited!

I grabbed the machine and excitedly ran to my mother and said "Look what I found!" Telling her what I had seen on the commercials. To which my mother replied "What took you so long to find it!"

My mother had bought me a real "gene" at last.

The "Weed Wacker"! I don't know who invented it, but I sure do thank them for it.

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