Where is my Sears Craftsman 2009 laptop?

We bought our first (and only) lawnmower, as required, with our first house. It is a Craftsman from Sears. The first five or ten years I thought nothing of hauling it out of the garage and expecting it to start in the spring. But it has been twenty-four years now, so every spring for the last four or five years I have considered it a minor miracle when I go to the garage, pull out my four wheeled workhorse and start it up. Miracles aside, I have utter faith in my faithful tool.

I am not proud of this, but my maintenance routine is to put the lawnmower in the garage in October and get it out in April. I understand it has an air filter. Actually I can see the filter. It’s pretty dirty. It’s original. Also I think there is some part (the engine?) that is supposed to be oiled (have its oil changed?). I wouldn’t know. My routine is: raise the spark plug cover; pump the rubber ball six times; pull the cord. Oh, and occasionally I pour gasoline in the gas tank.

It is the most dependable machine I have ever owned. And it has been stress tested. It has been the victim of a careless owner/user and yes, of downright abuse. The number of metal cans, tinfoil balloon bodies (don’t ask), dead basketballs, windsocks, and pine cones it has challenged and conquered? Countless. Plastic beer can holders become confetti under blades that have never been sharpened. The grass catcher became a casualty long ago, understandably, considering it was designed to catch grass, and the rubber flap at the back is in shreds; but my lawnmower still cuts grass. It cuts foot high grass, wet grass, and yes, even the occasional vicious and ubiquitous blackberry branch.

I wish any other machine at my house, especially a computer, could perform like my lawnmower. I have owned two Macs, a Toshiba and an IBM (and treated all of them with kid gloves). Yet I have always felt they could go at any minute, that they were finicky, high maintenance, mercurial. I mean think about it, they need to be updated, optimized, immunized, and secured against a multitude of viruses and bugs. I could not call them, with any confidence, dependable, rugged, stalwart.

And most importantly, they have never given me the unadulterated satisfaction of starting up my lawnmower in April. When Craftsmen starts making laptops, sign me up.