Timing: The time at which a leaf blower starts up is always the worst possible time. Perhaps you’re putting your tiny golden baby child down for a nap. Maybe you’ve had a chance, after a trying day of doing whatever you do all day, to sit down with a cocktail and that bestseller you’ve been dying to start. Or you and your loved one are finally going to have a hard discussion about a certain situation that you’ve been avoiding for, like, 20 years. Whatever it is, no matter when it is, a leaf blower will start up in your neighborhood somewhere (which means it will sound like it’s in your kitchen) the instant you begin. Your plans, however crucial, will be postponed and/or canceled. You will never get those three hours of your life back. They were stolen by the leaf blower.

Torpescence: Leaf blowers evolved from farm equipment and burst into popular usage in the late 1970s. I was a child in the pre-leaf-blower 1970s. I don’t remember there being an annual, autumn crisis in which layers upon layers of fallen leaves covered every single square inch of suburban America, halting all commerce and transport, because there was NO POSSIBLE WAY to get rid of them. That’s because we had rakes! We used the rakes to gather all those leaves up and put them in bags to take to the dump. Or we burned them. It took hours. It got us out of the house (parental bonus). It exhausted us and we didn’t bicker or squabble and fell asleep promptly after dinner. Plus raking leaves was fun, mostly. We created enormous mounds of leaves. We jumped in them. We were occasionally impaled by some sort of sharp lawn tool left prongs-up underneath those leaves, but it was just a minor inconvenience because we were wearing Toughskins, which were mostly puncture-proof. Plus we were up to date on our tetanus shots.