Keep off the grass: Have you ever thought about trying to balance a lawn mower on your face? Really? You have? Are you okay? (Garylittlewood/Wikimedia Commons)

Disclaimer: While this article is based on well-manicured facts, it does contain some unruly weeds of satire.

A man balanced a running lawn mower on his chin for 9 minutes and 17 seconds recently, which apparently is some kind of record or something. The man, David Rush, joins a list of greats like Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali who achieved truly amazing heights in their fields, although unfortunately for Rush his field is one that nobody cares about.

If you had to guess what state such a lawn mower-balancing man was from, your first thought might be, “probably someplace boring like Idaho.” And you would be correct, he does indeed hail from Idaho.

“That’s amazing that he could balance a riding lawn mower on his chin! Oh wait, it was just a regular mower? Well, I guess that’s kind of cool.”

– Some guy on a sidewalk who was willing to be interviewed

Some people were actually quite impressed with the balancing accomplishment. “This is a great day for America,” former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton said in a joint statement. “The ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, George Washington crossing the Delaware River, the moon landing, and now a guy balancing a lawnmower on his face, which apparently is some kind of record or something. We both have tears of joy in our eyes as we carefully craft this press release.”

Rush had previously attempted to break the lawn mower-balancing record, but the lawnmower used in that attempt did not include a grass catcher bag, so the International Organization for Monitoring Things That Don’t Matter disqualified him.

“The human jaw is the strongest muscle in the body, pound for pound,” noted an Oxford University professor in the Department of Anatomy and Lawn Care. “And one of evolution’s greatest reasons for us having a strong jaw is to balance heavy stuff on it when we have too much free time.”

Rush has goals beyond lawn mowers, however: He’s trying to hold the most Guinness World Records at the same time. He currently has 165 records, and the number to beat is 180. Perhaps breaking these records will finally give him the inner peace that we’re all searching for in our lives. Or perhaps he could get some corporate sponsorships out of it, which would be pretty nice, too.