A Few Things

Just Have to Talk About These Things.

First, I've wondered this for quite some time, why is it as soon as it snows people feel this overwhelming compulsion to get out there and shovel for 6 hours just to clear off driveways and side walks? I don't understand it. The other day my neighbor did just that, he shovelled and even got out his four wheeler with a scoop attached to the front of it, and cleared sidewalks, and the snotty fat German lady's driveway across the street, and I noticed he did not do ours, but did other people's, but whatever. I did not expect him to, but it did sort of make me wonder if he hated us too. Hehe. Anyway, he was out there literally all day messing around with that snow, and shovelling like mad.

When it is 18 degrees outside, the last thing I want to do is go out there and shovel snow. I did it the other day though, I vainly took that red shovel and got out there and cleared as much as I could before I froze to death. Did it help? No. Our driveway is so huge it would take me forever to get it cleared.

As I shovelled I noticed others around the neighborhood laboring over this snow. Old men out there shovelling and shovelling away, and I thought, criminy, why do old people go out and shovel the snow, people drop dead of heart attacks in their driveways trying to move mountains of this stuff, for goodness sakes the first few sunny days are going to melt most if not all of it away anyway. It seems silly to me. It really does. I've heard people say, "well if someone comes along and slips on the sidewalk, they can sue you." Well shit, let 'em try then. I hate shovelling snow, and I have a darn good reason for it, I did it for 6 hours straight one day.

Yep, my friend and I when we were about oh, 20 years old, we needed some extra cash, and honestly, who doesn't at that age, so we decided to head to this day laborer place, and see if we could get a job cleaning motel rooms for the day or something, which is what she had heard they would send us to do. Well, the day we chose to take this little adventure, it snowed, and when we got to the place, the only work they had to offer was for people to go out to various businesses and shovel snow. When our time came we stepped up to the counter, and the man sitting there looked at us and practically busted out laughing in our faces.

He said, "I don't have anything for you two, it's just snow shovelling today" well, we got our little feminist egos in a bunch and said, "We can shovel snow just as good as any man!" He smirked and said "fine, go see so and so, at X Apartment complex and work for him, but I have to tell you, he's going to be really mad at me for sending him a couple of girls!" Ha! "Well, we'll show him!" We said, and we were off.

On the way to the apartment complex we decided we would do our very best, and "prove" something to those bastards. When we found the old man running the place, he and his younger assistant laughed and said, "I can't believe he sent us a couple of girls" he seemed rather disappointed, but we assured him we would do a good job. The apartment complex was enormous, and our task was to shovel all the stairways, and sidewalks around them, they worked on the sidewalks connecting everything. Each building had 4 sets of stairways going up 3 flights or so, and I swear there were 2o buildings. We shovelled and shovelled, and after about 3 or 4 hours the old man said, "go take a 30 minute lunch break" I'm sure he might have thought we would not come back, but we did. I don't think it crossed our mind not to go back and finish the job.

All told the job was supposed to take 8 hours, but we finished it in 6, and I'm not lying, the old man said, "you two girls did better than any man they have ever sent out here to work, no one ever got this done in 6 hours before." We headed back to the day labor place to gloat in the man's face. Sure enough when we arrived he said, "Hey, they were very impressed with you two girls." We got our wages, which stupidly enough was for 6 hours rather than 8. We kicked ourselves for finishing too fast, but were still pleased that "we showed them". After that we went home and died.

Well, it felt like we died. My arms and shoulders were so sore, I could not lift them. I think I slept for 12 hours straight after that. We never went back to the day laborer place again. It was not worth it one single bit. I think we made about 25 dollars for that work. Totally not worth it. To this day, I hate shovelling snow with a passion. Hate it. That's why I have a 4 wheel drive, I just drive right out of the driveway right over it. I know it's not good to leave it on the concrete for a long time, but I just don't care. Because I use my arms and shoulders so much in my job, I honestly don't have it in me to shovel snow and stuff like I used to. Just doesn't seem worth it to me.

I'm sure some people might be absolutely appalled at my idea, and I know it is quite rebellious of me, and perhaps even makes me a bad citizen in some eyes, but really, I think if someone wants the sidewalk shovelled, then they have no right to expect me to provide the free labor to do it for them. I don't own the sidewalk afterall, and if I DID own it, shouldn't I have the right to choose NOT to shovel it, or to even allow people to walk on it if I were such inclined? This whole argument comes from the guilt my father instilled in me as a child, every time it snowed he had that driveway and sidewalk cleared ASAP, I even helped with that many many times, and would do so without even being asked. I never once stopped to think, why are we doing this? We just did it.

Well my parent's driveway was sloped, so if the snow were allowed to freeze up and turn to ice, it made it extremely difficult to get into the driveway, so that makes sense from a practical standpoint. My driveway on the other hand is 3 times the size of my parent's and it is not sloped in the least, but quite flat, and shaded so snow and ice stay there forever, or at least until we get enough sunny and warm days to melt it off.

I'm tired, coming down with something, this post went no where, but I'll go ahead and put it up anyway. More later.