SNOW AGAIN

OK, enough is enough. I woke up this morning to find an inch of snow on my truck. There was no warning, no sound of the Bobcat roaring around the parking lot , it was just, THERE!

It is hard to explain the irritation of brushing snow off your vehicle. You start at the drivers’ side using gloveless hands to clear a path to the door. The reason for the exposed paws, my gloves and snowbrush are inside the truck. Once the door is open, you must warm up your hands. I use the preferred Minnesota method of crossing the arms, sticking the hands in your armpits and hopping in place. I call it the “Morning Dance”. An out-of-state driver will see this and guess it is people impatiently waiting for a bus. No, it is only the beginning of a series of exercises to get you to work.

The next objective is to start your car. Sounds easy, doesn’t it. Well, it isn’t. You jump into the car and quickly slip on you gloves. It is important to keep them warm for upcoming tasks in this tiring ritual. Then you begin probing your pockets for the car keys and realize the gloves are hampering the effort. This leads to your first difficult question of the day. “Do I pull off the gloves, re-exposing the nearly frozen hands to the cold or not?”

Not a whole lot of options here. I usually start loudly damning an unnamed supreme being (thank you for the prays of absolution) and yank off one glove. I stuff the exposed hand in the pocket, predetermined earlier by a clumsy groping, and retrieve the cold keys.

Experience has taught me to keep the mitten off until you have started your vehicle. My truck complains briefly, then comes to life with a determined growl. I stuff my hand back into the glove, grab the snowbrush and jump out of the truck. It is all downhill now, but that hill is covered with ice.

I jumped out of my truck gripping the snow brush like a sword. I begin to swiped across the windshield but the wipers countered and with a simple swipe blasted snow into my face. My reaction was slow, but I was able to turned off the wipers. I then cautiously approached from the passenger side to finish the job. But I had switched the wipers to delay and the lifted right side wiper hit me in the nose as I stretched to wipe off the snow on that side. I am not a religious man, but people watching me may have thought so, I let loose with a few damnations of God and his family.  

Finally, My truck was warm and the snow wiped from it. I sat in the drivers’ seat relishing the warm and knowing I would be on time to my job. I step down on the accelerator to listen and see the rpms rise then started to slip into reverse when there was a knock at my window. I rolled it down and stared up at my neighbor standing at my car door.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” she says, “I love these type of mornings.”

All my anger dissolves. She saw this as a wonder, I as a curse. I am still learning in this frozen tundra. THANK GOD!