I’ve been poked, stabbed, bit, stung and slashed. I’ve rolled an ankle, given myself a concussion on a tree limb and re-broke a hand. I’ve been put down, been down, broke down and spun around. But after 15 years, I’ve sustained a new Injury the job. This truly has been a year of firsts. A year I will not miss. Today I’m mowing lawn in my hood. It’s a large lawn. .66 acres. (1of 34 we had). I finally filigreed out this yard grew over the years. It’s a fairly new lawn. Many cypress knees along the back fence. No problem. Lift deck upon mowing over the high ones. Once I make my four 52” passes that evade me and my mower of harm, I go at it. My mower tops out at 10mph. This lawn im probably going around 7mph with how smooth his lawn is. Then BOOM! I find out the fence used to be about 30-40 feet inside where it stands now. There’s a row of 4x4 posts that have been sawed off near ground level. I didn’t see it. Wasn’t a prepared for it. I’m chugging along and the mower stops. It hit a cut down post. I didn’t stop. Had I gone full speed I probably would’ve been thrown over the mower. Instead, I’m thrown in the air prior to my mower’s position. My stomach lands squarely on the bars surrounding my sticks. My hands somehow still on the sticks telling mower to go forward, while im now bent in half over my mower I tell myself to release my hands to kill the mowe before I get further injured. Holy [BLEEP]. Not fun. We had about 12 more after that. My stomach felt every dam bump in every lawn afterwards. Still hurts.

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I keep going over it. Could I have prevented it. But having been on this lawn about 12 times, I’ve never seen these sawed off posts. The cypress knees where shown before we ever started. So I keep telling myself I couldn’t have known. Wouldn’t have done any different. But if someone saw what happened, I would’ve looked like a newbie.

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