I will admit to having been born in Omaha. I will admit to the five years spent in Minneapolis. I will admit to being one of those Marylander’s who think winter around here just looks, well, wrong without snow. I will admit to being one of those people who doesn’t get the toilet paper & bread hysteria. It’s just snow fer crying out loud.
However, there is one thing I can’t admit to anymore.
Now, let me tell you about the driveway at my house. Biff the deranged architect designed it. While it is straight, it is also at a 45 degree incline. Downhill. To the garage. Except for the 15 feet at the top. That slants downhill. In the other direction. That would be towards the street for those keeping score at home. So that means that I have a lovely 6 six inches on the driveway, and it is quite picturesque. No let me rephrase: from here inside the nice WARM house it’s quite picturesque. Of course it also means the last 15 feet have a mass of piled snow plow laden snow that Jean M. Auel would kill to write about.
For removing this mass of white crystal frozen liquid, I am armed with a 15-year-old Toro hand pushed snow blower. These are great. You plug it in, and push it along and WHOOSH, the snow is driven from your driveway, where it is a car trapping menace, to your yard, where the young and young at heart can arm themselves with that most elemental of human weapons: the snowball. Yes, this is a great snow-removing tool I have. Too bad the intake portion of this thing is all of three inches tall.
So after 20 minutes of pushing the snow blower above the actual driveway so that I can then go back and do it again with it on the driveway, I have the lower slopes of Mt. Everest cleared. I have only the 15-foot maw that is covered with snow and chunks of ice left. So I retire inside for a nice reviving cup of hot chocolate. I must say this: our parents and grandparents love to rant about how easy we have it, and how things were tougher in their day. Its times like this that I grant their point. They didn’t have instant Hot Chocolate.
A heartfelt look at the unopened Casablanca and I return to base camp. It is at this point that I note an interesting phenomenon. There is this thing in mathematics that I believe is called an Infinite regression to a finite point. Or whatever. The point is, there are these infinite series where you 1 thing in one unit, and then half a thing in half a unit, etc. Mathematically, the series converges at two. I bring this up because trying to finish the last portion of the driveway is like that. Except instead of converging at 2, I notice that even though I just finished another half of what was left, there is still MORE damn snow here then there was the last time I looked. This ends finally, in the same ethically questionable maneuver these snow removal jobs always end in - after promising not to do it, I blow the last couple of feet out into the street so that finally, mercifully, the job is over.
Now, given where I started this from, I know you are wondering: what is it I can’t admit to?
Well, it’s this. When I was growing up, not only did snow mean that winter was here, not only did snow mean that it was time to let the great snowball wars begin, not only did it mean it was time to find new and creative ways to injure myself with the assistance of a sled, not only did it mean (well after we moved to MD anyway) that school would be off for the most ridiculous of reasons, it meant:
HEY I CAN EARN SOME MONEY SHOVELING SOME LAZY OLD GUY’S DRIVEWAY!
Yes, when I was you we mocked those older folks who were too lazy to get up off the couch, stop watching that damn old black and white movie on TV, put down the mug of hot chocolate and shovel their damn drive. We laughed at their gullibility, giving us 10 or 15 bucks so that they could avoid lower back pain while we did the most simplest of tasks, removing snow. We raced from drive to drive, as there were others who sensed easy money to be blown on candy, games or model airplanes. Those were the days.
WELL DAMMIT, I AM THAT LAZY OLD GUY WITH LOWER BACK PAIN NOW!
Where the [expletive] are you, you lazy kids? C’mer and shovel my damn drive so I can watch Casablanca already. I’m too old for this…
Happy snow day. Me and my aching back are going to lie down.
