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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
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Up top, I'd like to direct your attention to a new Braves post over at Bugs & Cranks:
All Quiet on the Grapefruit Front -- It's quiet in Braves' camp. Too quiet.
And now, on with the show.
But not today.
"Work, school -- it's all the same thing, really. You get up early, schlep your way there, spend all day having people tell you things you don't understand, have lunch, get yelled at for sleeping at your desk, and go home."
Last night, I heard there was a snowstorm headed our way. We might get six inches of the white stuff, maybe even eight. The flakes were due to start drifting overnight, which meant Friday morning would dawn on a glistening white sheet of beautiful fallen snow.
For 'real' adults, that's a downer. A snowstorm means digging out your car, and shoveling your steps, and salting the sidewalks, and trudging around in clunky wet boots. I've got the same issues now, too, of course. But snow still means to me what it meant when I was a twelve-year-old boy:
NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!
Or in this case, work. Work, school -- it's all the same thing, really. You get up early, schlep your way there, spend all day having people tell you things you don't understand, have lunch, get yelled at for sleeping at your desk, and go home. That's just about every weekday I've spent between the ages of six and thirty-six. The wheel just keeps on spinning.
But one thing that can stop that wheel, besides weekends and delicious vacation days -- is snow. And I'll gladly trade an hour or two of shovelling for a full morning in my jammies and an afternoon nap on my couch. So I was positively giddy last night, with the prospect of a late-winter blizzard coming to brighten my March. I even sang 'The Snow Song':
'Snow, snow, snow, snow --
If it comes, I won't go.
I tell you, it better show --
Snooooooooow!!'
(No, it's not fricking Gershwin. I wrote it when I was nine. Cut me some damned slack.)
So I went to sleep -- when I calmed down enough to go to sleep -- looking forward to a wintry start to a spectacular three-day weekend. I woke up early, pounced out of bed, and sprang to the window to find....
Nothing. Not one damned snowflake. The whitest thing in front of me was my reflection in the window. The kid in me curled into a fetal ball and threw a temper tantrum. Either that, or I had heartburn from last night's hot wings. Whichever it was, I was pissed. But I had to go to work. Just like any other stupid day.
So I grumbled through a shower. I groused while I got dressed, bitched through breakfast, and carped all the way to the car. I slumped into the driver's seat, turned the key, and as I pulled out of th edriveway, I watched a single, lonely flake drift out of the sky and flutter onto the windshield. Then another. And another.
It snowed all the way to work. When I went to lunch, it was snowing sideways. When I left for the evening it was falling thick and heavy, like white globs of goose guano hurtling towards earth. The ride back home was long, icy, and treacherous. And when I arrived at my house, I found the six-to-eight inches I was expecting on my sidewalks and street -- not conveniently keeping me from getting out to the office, but now preventing me from getting back in.
I dug my way to the house. The child inside me kicked me in the nuts. And now, I hate snow just as much as any grown-up, shovel-toting, dead-inside adult. Damn those meteorologists for getting a guy's hopes up.
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