Manual Labor

I sometimes wonder what my role in the pre-industrial world would be. As a relatively scrawny, extremely myopic male without a particularly strong tolerance for pain, it’s unlikely that I would have performed the role of heroic warrior in my kin group. In fact, before the invention of corrective lenses, I might have been consigned to sitting on the king’s stoop with a tin cup, begging for alms.

This reality is continually brought home to me anytime I’m forced (and it usually is become I am forced) to undertake any serious physical labor: I’m just not very strong and few things bring that home to me any more clearly than digging and/or lugging things around, two activities I’ve spent much more time doing in the last few days than I usually do and certainly than I prefer.

We’re trying to finish up (well, start, I guess) some landscaping projects in our backyard; one entailed my having to move a big pile of dirt from one side of the lawn to the other; the second required the removal of a Cyclone fence that runs along the alley that borders our property.

I spent two hours filling up a wheelbarrow with dirt and rocks and pushing it around on Friday; on Saturday, with the help of a guy who does odd jobs in our neighborhood, I spent another couple digging out metal fence posts and dragging chain links around.

Bobby, the guy who helped me, is over 60, and has had a few small strokes, but he totally kicked my ass in the strength department. I’d be huffing and puffing and feeling like crying out of frustration as I tried to yank one of the offending posts from the ground, and he’d just wrap his hands around the metal, grunt, and pull it out, like a rotten tooth from the mouth of a meth head.

Still, I’d be satisfied with my manly accomplishments if I weren’t so sore today.

191/327
to go: 136
days remaining: 183