For years I blew my top - along with the rotator cuff in my shoulder – trying to get our pull-start lawnmower going. I cursed the inventors of contraptions that require the upper body strength of gorillas. Eventually, with a single infuriating pull, one of the men in my family would start the mower for me. How ironic! We women seem to mow the lawn at least as often as men.
But then we got an electric start mower. So now, when the grass is too long for our old fashioned, calorie-burning push mower, I can work up a sweat actually mowing the lawn, as opposed to swearing and yanking.
Usually, the marketplace wises up first. If a single woman can hoist her kayak onto her car alone, she will be more apt to purchase one. Purists may decry the lighter plastic kayaks as soap dish abominations. But I know a woman, who, at 77, uses blankets to prevent scratching the paint as she slides her 42 pound kayak onto the top of her car - then glides off to watch loons at dawn.
Then there’s the gas powered wood splitter; the ones that swivel to an upright position even allow you to roll the heaviest chunks onto the splitting bed. There are bags of cement that don’t weigh eighty pounds; I can easily lift - and buy - 25 pounders. Now I’m looking for a frost pillar small enough to hoist myself, as a base for mosaics.
Had I understood, as a beginning beekeeper, that a deep hive box full of bees and honey can weigh eighty pounds, I’d have instead opted for the shallow ones used in extraction. I can lift the big ones now, but in ten years… maybe not.
My friend, Nancie, who’s single, builds her own stonewalls, uses a wood splitter and plows on her tractor. She says tractors are a lot more female friendly and maneuverable these days. She swears by quick release implements, where you can pull a couple levers on the tractor to drop a bucket or put on the forklift.
Knowledgeable applications of leverage, after all, really do level the playing field for women. I’d like a more stable wheel barrow with a slightly lower center of gravity so I could scoop up large rocks I might not be able to lift on my own.
Archimedes once said, “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.”
Now, women can.
