Just noticed where you said you grew up spending 4 hours mowing a lawn with a push mower growing up. That's just silly; I'd say someone should really get a rider if their lawn would take them more than maybe 90 minutes not including other side things like weed wacking. Even spending 2 hours on it with a push mower would get old fast, so no wonder you hate it now lol
4hrs with a push mower isn't that bad. I think I did closer to 10-12hrs a week as a kid for a few years.
That's not some sort of a humblebrag, either. It fucking sucked.
Every day after school I would mow for an hour or two. When it was wet it would take longer and usually eat my Saturday too. But later in the summer when it got hot, I might be done by late Wednesday or early Thursday night.
We had a lot of acreage, and the 'yard' was fucking ridiculous. Plus my father was a cheap bastard of the highest order. When he did finally 'splurge' on a used riding mower, it was the smallest riding mower you can get. I think he paid $100 or $150 for it? It was a Snapper though, and for as small as it was, that fucking thing was a million times better than a push mower.
But around that time my family also decided to start fixing all of the fencing in the fields and doubling down on the livestock. So all of time the riding mower saved me, was then spent doing a bunch of that fucking shit.
The only thing I hated worse than push-mowing, was doing fencing. When my dad was too cheap to buy fence posts (he relented years later) I would have to go out with a chainsaw and find the straightest hedge-apple limbs/trees and cut posts. That wood never rots. Then I'd have to spend a lot of time digging holes in the clay with one of those clamshell diggers, by hand.
The weird thing about it, was that for all the labor I did as a kid, I was super skinny and never gained weight until I joined the Army. It was fucking bizarre.
