S*cks To Be Me (#8): The Ice Storm

Okay. I swear. I promise. This will end soon. The S*cks To Be Me series will, eventually, stop. You will be released. Set free. Made Whole. And afterwards, you’ll be able to sit your grandchildren on your knee and say, Yes, I Survived The Great Tedium Deluge of 2008-09. And I recovered. Of course, it took many years of therapy. And enough electro-shock treatments to power an aircraft carrier. And that’s why my eyes are crossed. And we won’t mention that faint scent of singed rubber. But things are just ducky now.

Anyway…

As you know, I’m doing a seemingly interminable series on the wonderful little adventures I had at the tail end of 2008. You’ll recall that these included sheer terror, eye surgery, getting kicked out of my Ph.D. program (by a set of academic “advisors” who may be best likened to ambulatory excrement. With weevils), a flooded basement, assorted dead appliances, and, oh yes, a Christmas Tree that didn’t get hugged. And probably never forgave us for it. And developed a complex. But that’s what therapy is for. And, in the words of Freud, ah, to be Jung again.

Where was I? Oh, yes. So, last time, I’d just had my cataract surgery. After much dread on my part, it turned out to be quick, painless, and easy. I was in and out in like 20 minutes. In fact, I was a little disappointed. I mean, I was looking forward to all those wonderful opportunities to bore total strangers trapped with me on airplanes with stories about all the horrors I endured for Perfect Vision. But, no. Was not to be. Sad reality. I blame myself.

Anyway, so, I had the surgery. Everything was going fine. I figured now, finally, Things Are Going To Get Back To Normal.

Gosh.

Golly.

Darn.

You’d think I’d learn.


*

I had the surgery on December 15. That was a Monday. By Friday, it had . . . begun . . . to …snow.

And snow. And snow. And …snow.

By Saturday, it had snowed A LOT. There were happy little drifts of white icy shit everywhere. And, oh, by the way, if I ever get my hands on freaking Frosty The Snowman…well, let’s just say Napalm Enema and leave it at that.

But there’s more to the story. We live on a hill. Our street runs down from the hill and to the main street below us. But, there’s another street that intersects ours just about directly across from our driveway. In effect, we live on a three-way intersection.

Now, what that means is that snowplows coming up the hill … and snowplows coming down the hill … and snowplows coming along the Third Street . . . all meet. Right in front of our house. And stuff most of their freaking snow into our driveway. Meaning, quite literally, there may be four feet (or more) of snow piled up at the mouth of our driveway after any one storm.

This is known as life in picturesque New England.

Did I mention the Napalm enema?

*

Okay, so, what this means is that SOMEONE has to go out and shovel the aforesaid driveway.

Three guesses who that someone is.

You want some hints? Okay. There are two of us living in this house. There’s me. And then there’s Martha. We also have a dog. His name is Oreo.

At the best of times, Martha has some difficulty walking across uneven or challenging terrain—like, say, if it is knee deep in snow. And, right at the moment, she can’t stand on ice at all—the chest wall injury, remember?

Meanwhile, Oreo lacks opposable thumbs. Which means he cannot hold a shovel.

Lucky bastard.

*

So … a short time later, I am standing out in the snow.

Shoveling.

Alone.

While the left side of my head (the surgery side) sort of feels like somebody with a very large jackhammer is trying to get out. While tap dancing. In golf shoes. With extra long cleats.

I look up at the window of the house now and then. I see Martha. She sees me. She waves. She smiles. Then, she goes and has another cup of coffee.

I whimper a lot.

*

Anyway, for the next day or so, I feel like what’s left at the bottom of a birdcage shortly after Tweetie has a charming tête-à-tête with an E. Coli the size of a Buick. That, plus the fact that my eye surgeon just about had a cow when he found out I’d been doing major physical labor right after my operation … “You Did WHAT?”… made me admit that, yes, instead of shoveling snow myself, maybe, next time, we could actually hire someone to plow our driveway.

We answer a few ads on Craig’s List and, voila, the next thing you know we have an arrangement with a really nice guy named Tom. He’s got a diesel pickup with a plow and he’ll come on mornings after big snows. Cool.

In fact, it’s particularly cool because about a week later, we had another storm. A fairly sizable depression rolled up the coast, bringing with it all sorts of moisture, which it proceeded to dump on us.

But it was an odd storm. It didn’t start off as snow. Rather, it began as sleet.

Now, here’s a confession. When I was a boy living in New Mexico, I had no idea what sleet was. Oh, I knew the word. I’d hear broadcasters or my parents talk about “sleet and freezing rain.” But, I didn’t have an emotional understanding of the term. I didn’t really intuit, or grok, the genuine and inner meaning of Sleetness. Or the Gestalt of Freezing Rainism.

But how could I? I hadn’t experienced them. And, to quote another and better humorist, there are some things that cannot be explained to virgins in either words or pictures.

*

But, if, per chance, you are lucky enough to not have experienced sleet and/or freezing rain— and are, thus, sleet-virginal—then let me provide you with some background data.

Rain, when it falls, can get you wet. Snow can be slippery and block driveways.

But, sleet…

Sleet, or freezing rain, is partly water and partly ice. When it hits something, it sticks and freezes. In the winters here, after an ice storm, you’ll see cars, houses, telephone poles, power lines, and, most of all, trees absolutely glittering with ice.

It can be rather beautiful, actually, particularly on a sunny day. Envision a world in which everything is sheathed in white, all of it shimmering in the dawn, the light breaking prismatically into tiny, hard-edged rainbows.

Unfortunately, it is also deadly. The trees break under the weight of the ice. The power lines snap and drop live and sparking in the street. House roofs sag.

And cars?

Those slide helplessly in the road.


*

Just in case you’re wondering, pretty much everything in the previous section …particularly the cars and helpless part … is known as “foreshadowing.”

Great word, that Foreshadowing. Make a note of it. Might come in handy the next time you have to write an English paper or be pompous at parties while discussing pretentious European movies with no plot and no characters but great full frontal nudity. And I only read it for the articles.


*

So, late in December, but not quite next door to Christmas, we wake up and find ourselves in a gray, overcast day. From the windows we hear the little clicking noise of sleet on glass. If you’re interested, it sounds a bit like rat claws on hard tile. Really cheery.

I stagger out of bed. I look outside. The sleet is slowly giving way to pure snow. There are already two to three inches of it on the ground. That means that Tom will be here with the plow shortly. But he’s not here yet.

Ah-ha! I think, wisely. Here’s my chance. I’ll run outside (I decide) and move our cars onto the street. That way, Tom will be able to plow the whole driveway.

Boy, am I smart.

You betcha.


*

I grab my keys, slip my pants on over my PJs and head for the door.

It strikes me, as I go, that I haven’t seen any city-owned snowplows … or sand trucks…on the hill. Or on our street. Or on the intersecting street. Or on the main street down the way.

Well, I think to myself, if they’re not sending out sand trucks, it must not be that bad. Maybe the storm wasn’t as big as they expected. In fact, who knows? Maybe, at last, Things Are Getting Back To Normal.

Thinking thusly, I step outside and …

Do you know the term “helpless as a hog on ice?”

Look it up.

You’ll understand.


*

But that’s for next time.

Onward and upward.












Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker