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March 19, 2007
Thar He Blows
I usually joke at least three or four times a winter that I’m packing up and moving to San Diego. That’s the number of times in which the New England winter emotionally and physically violates me. This past weekend was no different. Not content with throwing one “a few inches of snow, then a few inches of sleet, then a few inches of rain, then we’ll freeze this tortuous concoction on yo’ ass” storm our way this year, New England decided to throw two of them or way within a month of each other.
Having learned from the debacle that was last month’s storm, we both parked on opposite sides of the street, to avoid the lovely “we’ll ticket you if you park on the odd side of the street” rule that we discovered as our cars were buried in ice on Valentine’s Day. Moreover, we parked atop the small hill on our street, to ensure that all the water didn’t accumulate around our cars like last time and render our automobiles as useless as penicillin on Paris Hilton. All good.
Too good to be true. Sorta like the trailers for "The Matrix Reloaded", that way.
Come out Saturday to shovel out our cars, and found both residents of the houses in question shoveling their driveways out. And not one, but BOTH of them, gave us grief over the location of our cars. One merely passive-aggressively asked me that, should I ever park in front of their house again, could I move so two cars could park between the driveways around their house. Fine, fine, whatever, tell me when I’m not getting our of a blizzard in front of a house that you haven’t been able to rent in four months. Clearly it's my car crushing your hopes of tenants, not the garish green-and-red "Season's Greetings" sign in front of the house in the middle of March. You run with that theory, Leona.
But the other house took the cake. We only went there since, the second that The Girl turned on the windshield wipers to brush off the remaining snow, one of them broke clean off my car. San Diego, here I freakin’ come. Fine, whatever, I will deal with this later, I think, and go shovel her car out. As I’m shoveling out, the snowblowing man of the house asks me if this is my car. I say yes, taking the collective ownership of the car as a shortcut to explain things. I’m also in the front, nearer to him than the Girl, who’s clearing off the back.
And this snowblowin’ SOB says, “You know, would you mind not parking here anymore? Because, you know, you’re right in front of our house.”
And he’s totally serious. He asked this in the way he’d ask me to make sure my dog stopped pooping on his front doorstep. Hell, he asked me this in the way he’d ask me to make sure I myself stopped pooping on his front doorstep.
I’m so taken aback by his claim of ownership over this 8’ of public road, adjacent mind you to his FREAKIN’ DRIVEWAY, a luxury I myself do not have but hey, let’s not belabor the point right now, and calmly say, “Well, you know, we’d park in front of ours, but it’s actually illegal. We just found the closest space to our house last night to avoid being ticketed.” All true, and all just, and all logical, but Senor Snowblower was having none of my earth logic.
“Yea, see, thing is, this is where I usually park.”
To which I said, “Yea, see, thing is, this is where I’m about to take this shovel and scoop out your inners, you ginormous tool.” OK, I said this only in my mind, but I said it all the same.
He honestly couldn’t see the problem is asking me (and, I suppose, all inhabitants of Earth at large) to carve out this one spot for his own personal use. I was clearly the villain in his narrative, the errant knave who dared park upon sacred ground, the dastardly heathen who corrupted his sacred ground. I mean, The Girl’s car isn’t going to win any awards but it wasn’t anywhere near as appalling as this guy found it.
And the smugness, gawd in heaven. He had it in spades. He was like Gary Cole in “Office Space”. At any moment as we cleared her car out, I expected him to come over as ask me to put a cover page on my TPS report. Luckily, clearing out the car after our little exchange took next to no time, due to the heat coming off the faces of The Girl and myself melting the living hell out of the remaining snow. Course, naturally, The Girl stops a few feet after driving out of the cleared spot, and promptly gets stuck in the ice in front their driveway, which now contained Mrs. Snowblower backing out in her SUV. I didn’t so much push The Girl’s car to safety so much as deadlift it, throw it atop my shoulders not unlike Atlas, and carry it to Route 93. Adrenaline’s a good thing. RYAN SMASH!
I started to shovel out the offending show that once enveloped the offending car that forever poisoned his homeland, and he told me he’d take care of it himself. I normally would chalk this up to neighborly charity, but clearly none had been on display up until this point, so I took it to mean he wanted my stench as far away as possible so he could start the cleansing ceremony and appease the gods we’d offended with our vehicle.
Went back inside, closed the door, shotgunned a beer (at 11 am, to boot), sat down in the man room, and played five straight hours of “God of War” on my PS2. I battled all sorts of creatures: minotaurs, harpies, Medusas, and yet, all of them in my mind’s eye looked a whole lot like the creature known as Satan Snowblower.
Needless to say, I had quite the cathartic afternoon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to look up some 2BRs in suburban San Diego…
Posted by Ryan McGee at March 19, 2007 07:31 PM