When disaster strikes, it’s a good to have a plan . . . but, plans won’t help if you don’t stick to them.

My father was a man of practical wisdom, and one lesson he tried to teach me was to tune up my lawn mower every May.

This year, I ignored his wisdom.
This weekend, disaster struck.

This is when my disaster plan should have kicked in. Unfortunately, I’ve been gaining weight lately, so I decided to tackle this problem without my standard tools: A bottle of Dr. Pepper, and a box of Mike-n-Ike. So, what should have been a 30 minute repair job, turned into a week-long battle.

I started with all the general maintenance tasks I should have done four months ago, but the mower still wasn’t working. So, I started on dirtier tasks like disassembling and cleaning the carburetor.

Four days later, I was a Lowe’s pricing new lawn mowers. I don’t like spending more than $20 on anything that doesn’t have a circuit board, so looking at the cost of new lawn mowers was making me a little sick.

The Second-Best Tool For The Job

That’s when I had an epiphany. I sprinted to the check-out counter and was thrilled to see Lowe’s had a full stock of assorted candies — no Mike-n-Ikes, but in a pinch, StarBursts will do. (The benefit of Mike-n-Ikes over StarBursts is that when you’re doing repair work, your hands get dirty, so you can just pour the candy into your mouth rather than unwrapping the candies individually . . . that is the wisdom I will pass on to my son.)

On the way home, I finished half my candy and all the soda. When I pulled into the driveway, I had my second epiphany; When I cleaned the carburetor, I hadn’t checked the diaphragm. I dug through my pile of lawn mower parts, found the carburetor, and sure enough, the diaphragm was bad.

On the way back to Lowe’s I finished the rest of my candy, and was feeling pretty good.

Twenty minutes later I had a working lawnmower, and I had consumed 23 grams of sugar. Total repair cost: about $10. And I learned an important lesson: When disaster strikes, all diets are off.