I have a friend who lives in San Diego. He doesn’t know it, but I hate him.
“It’s eighty degrees with a gentle breeze, Jerry,” he casually mentions when we talk on the phone. “Sweethearts are picnicking; families are frolicking at the beach….”
Can you feel it coming on? The hate, I mean.
My friend continues. “I’m standing by the pool with a glass of red wine. You and Liz should come visit us. We have an extra bedroom. We’ll go out to this fabulous tapas restaurant I know, my treat.”
My friend is gracious, which makes me feel guilty for hating him. Still, I want to say, “Try living in Michigan, sucker! You and your wife should come visit us sometime. How about me treating you to dinner? We can go to the all-you-can-eat-buffet and put on an extra layer of body fat; you know, so we can stay warm shoveling snow.”
Yes, Snow Removal Season is almost here. It’s a magical, whimsical time of year when you don your scarf and your knit cap, and your sweater, and your long underwear, your triple-insulated boots, mittens, snow pants, and a chisel to hammer away the frozen snot from your nose – to go out to meet Mother Nature, who has laid down her first inch of powder, with more to come. But for now, it’s the stuff of a Robert Frost poem. You announce to your wife there’s no time like the present: you’re going to get a head start on the snow and clean it up before it gets packed down. You begin pushing the snow forward. You feel exhilarated. You go faster and faster — until you encounter that crack in the pavement you forgot about. The shovel stops. You don’t. You didn’t want to have more kids anyway.
Days become shorter. It’s dark when you go to work and dark when you come home. You become more and more despondent. You know your doom is sealed when Keith Thompson from the Newschannel 3 Severe Weather Center announces something you never would have thought of: “Be sure to wear your mittens because it’s really cold outside!” You shovel all your snow one day, and the next it’s like you were never there. As for me, I could handle the snow, face-numbing cold, and TV weather people – if not for my nemesis: Mr. Snow Plow Guy.
I’m not talking about the guy who does your neighbor’s driveway. I’m talking about the guy who works for the City and drives a plow truck the size of a locomotive. He receives his route instructions from Snow Plow Headquarters: “Come in, Snowplow One, drone surveillance indicates Jerry Howell has just finished shoveling and is getting ready to go to work.”
Mr. Snow Plow Guy springs into action. He turns around and floors it, back to Woodmont Drive. After all, it is vitally important the street be made “wider,” say, by twelve inches. I hear the distant sound of blade scraping concrete. Mr. Snow Plow Guy roars past my house, redepositing a wall of ice boulders the size of my neighbor’s car – hey, wait a minute, that is my neighbor’s car! I drop to my knees in despair. I go back to my garage to fetch a pick axe.
I decide I don’t hate my friend in San Diego after all. As for Mr. Snow Plow Guy, I better not say.