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January 19, 2005

ain't it thrillin'

It snowed today. It was lovely, actually--the snow was dry and light and blew across the streets of the city and whirled and eddied between the buildings, and when I looked out one of the office windows all I saw was white.

But I don't live in a part of the country that enjoys snow, or even knows what to do with it. We see snow, it's time to panic. First, panic. Second, get in a car, preferably an SUV the size of a small town. Third, go out on the slippery roads and try to mow down the more cautious drivers. Milquetoasts. Pussies. Hah!

But still, anybody with half a brain knows that, yes, even if your car is really, really big, it will still slide on ice. Which just goes to show, apparently, that the pilots of those SUVs have less than half a brain. Sliding SUVs, other drivers in too much of a hurry to care that there weren't actually any visible lanes on the highway, people who maybe have never actually seen snow before, all contributed to my commute this afternoon--a trip that normally takes me 40 minutes took two and a half hours.

When I finally made it off 95, negotiated the slushy secondary roads and reached our street, I realized that I must have been the first car to drive on it since it had begun snowing. Damn. No cars, no plowing, no sand, no salt. Gripping the wheel, I inched the car to the top of The Hill--where once, in another winter, I parked and called you to come get me because I was too scared to drive down it. But you don't live here any more. So today I sat at the top, engine idling.

A woman out shoveling her driveway glanced curiously at me; I waved. Hi there! Yup, just sitting at the top of this incredibly steep hill, admiring the view--my last, probably, before I put the car in gear and go careering down the sheet of ice that the road most certainly is at this point, like somebody on an out-of-control sled, gaining speed, jumping the curb, veering across the grass and into the lake, where unable to break my window to get out I will die, frozen solid and sunk to the bottom, becoming an urban legend while the geese paddle over me.

In the rearview mirror another car suddenly came into view, cresting the hill behind me. No, not just another car--a Cadillac Escalade, white, like a man-eating polar bear. A Saab-eating polar bear. Shit, shit, shit. I remembered you saying to me "don't forget that first gear is your friend" and holding my breath, eased my foot off the clutch. The Escalade was directly in back of my bumper; I figured if I didn't move fast enough it would probably push me down the hill.

So we started off in first gear and because that seemed to work so well I kept the car in first gear, probably making the polar-bear driver nuts but oh well, and we made our stately journey down the frozen, snow-covered hill, safely past the grass with no veering, across the bridge and onto our street, where I began to breathe again.

When our son got home he said "Mom! The schoolbus is stuck at the bottom of the hill and can't get back up!" Hah. Amateur.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)