Yesterday afternoon: I've stopped the lawn mower, and I'm poking at my cellphone with the green-stained fingers of my gardening gloves.

"I need to speak to my friendly non-neighborhood, not-local lawn and garden tech," I say.

So Mom puts Dad on the phone.

"I'm halfway, okay, two-thirds of the way through mowing the lawn, and I stopped to empty out the grass bag. And that's when I saw this oily lookin' black goo on the, uh, silver bit between the the two red bits."

"The silver bit between the the two red bits." My dad sounds both amused and doubtful about how effective this long-distance service call will be if I can't get any more descriptive than colors. The Craftsman mower palette is not extensive.

"Yeah, the silver bit with all the "Hey, This Gets Hot!' warnings on it."

"Oh, the muffler. That's the muffler."

"Okay, so the muffler has this oily black goo on it. The engine sounded fine, but this stuff is by the oil case, so I figured I should call and check. It doesn't really smell like burned oil, though. It smells like melted...oh." I giggle.

"What?"

"I just noticed a big hole in the plastic garbage bag I was going to put the grass in."

"So you have melted plastic on the muffler." My father is laughing.

"Yeah, apparently I called to find out what to do after I put a plastic bag too close to the muffler."

"You start up the mower again and finish the lawn." I laugh. "And the plastic chars off and maybe leaves some black spots on your muffler," he says.

"I can live with that," I say.