Snow and Connie Francis and Snow and Shovels

I love the snow.

I hate the snow.

I grabbed the wrong snow shovel as I exited the front door of my house for the driveway.  Off the front porch, my left and then right foot sank into the snow, so powdery and sand-like that if I were to close my eyes I could have imagined I was at the beach.  No time for that.  I walked quickly, my shoes making a determined scrunch scrunch scrunch sound in the snow.  Walking around the car, I swing the orange plastic headed shovel into the air and start scraping away at the snow around the driver-side window of my Subaru Crosstrek.  The metal edge of the shovel head scrapes across the window shade, leaving angry scratch marks on the tinted plastic.

Dammit!  I grabbed the wrong shovel.

I scream into the woods,"Mother f@#$#@!"

I throw the orange shovel at the nearest tree.

Back to the house.

scrunch scrunch scrunch

I am supposed to use the blue plastic shovel, not the orange plastic shovel.  The blue plastic shovel is all plastic, no metal edge.  Back to the Crosstrek.

scrunch scrunch scrunch

By now, I'm very annoyed with myself.  I try to smooth out the angry scratch marks on the window shade with my gloved right hand.  It's not happening.  The marks are still angry.  If they could talk, they'd be saying, "you're the one who put us here and we are not leaving this spot!  Not now, not ever!"  I am imagining their angry protest in my mind as I open the driver-side door and slide into the seat.

I start-up the Crosstrek.  Immediately, the radio starts screaming Who's Sorry Now? by Connie Francis.  Connie Francis?  Did my mother sneak out with my car just before the last snow storm for a drive up and down the main drag?  I am imagining her in that moment behind the wheel of my Crosstrek with a Pall Mall Red cigarette hanging out her mouth.  The driver-side window is down, and yet the cabin of my car is agog with smoke.  Connie Francis is screaming out some co-dependent nonsense on the car radio.

There is no main drag on Mount Wismer.

I feel totally out of control this morning.  Why am I sitting behind the wheel of my Crosstrek when I haven't even finished scraping the snow off my windshield?  Why the f@#$ is my radio playing music from the 1950s?  Why am I not changing the channel?  WHY AM I STILL LISTENING TO CONNIE FRANCIS!!!???

I turn the radio off, get out of the car, and begin to scrape the snow and ice off my windshield.

"Who's sorry now?" I say to myself.  I start to hear the song in my head.  It won't go away.

I keep scraping.

scrape SCRAPE S-C-R-A-P-E

Who's sorry now?

I am finally finished scraping the snow and ice and funk and tree nut husks and branches and...  "What?  Tree nut husks?"  Yes.  I remember there is a squirrel who lives under my house.  It likes to sit on the hood of my car while it eats nuts and stares at me.  I notice the discarded orange snow shovel.  Dead.  Laying face down in the snow at the foot of the tree I threw it at.

Who's sorry now?

I'm sorry now.  I take the blue and orange shovels back to my house.  Then I walk back to my car, get in, and back out the driveway.

I'm on the road now.  The sun is wrestling mightily with the clouds above me.  It seems the sun and the clouds both want their shadows cast today.  I'm happy for a touch of sunshine.

I turn on the radio and tune it to the '50s channel.

Perhaps there is another lesson for me to learn from the lyrics of that bygone decade.

Is this guy singing about a donkey?

WTF?

Deep breathing.

Listen and learn, Orval.  Listen and Learn.







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