The sun sets on another day…
The day was cool and crisp and the ice glazed the landscape like a magical frosting. A magical frosting that knocked down trees and covered cars and homes. In the end, it was a good day, but only if you look at it the right way.
As I was driving through the ice storm this morning (You have to love it when a paragraph starts with that) I found that I was musing about all the past ice storms in my life. there have been quite a few as Lexington KY seems to be right in the heart of ice storm land, and now it appears Muskegon MI is right there too. I remembered an ice storm when I was in my first year of college that comes to mind and made me laugh.
I was feverish, perhaps pretty heavily feverish, but it is hard to be sure. I lived at home and had a new girlfriend at UK, and really wanted to see her or talk to her. Well, back then we did not have cell phones and if you wanted to call someone you hoped they were home. We did not have text (gasp) and could not send videos (eeek) and Facebook only happened when someone hit you in the head with War and Peace. So, here I was, alone, feverish, and I suddenly realized I had the solution to everything back then: the keys to my car.
Now, you have to understand, a car was not a thing you drove while you were texting back then, it was a signification you actually had something in life. A car was not something given blindly to you, it was something you worked for, put gas in, loved, and treated like it mean something. Usually you worked on your own car (Because you could back then) and I really liked my car a lot. So I took my keys and went outside and found that I had to skate to the car. Fortunately I had enough presence of mind (it may not sound like it) to put shoes on and it was not ice skating on bare feet but instead ice skating on tennis shoes.
So I got in my car, and started it. The world thrummed as the engine on that magnificent machine came to life and I saw quickly that I was encased in a brick of ice. No problem. I let the heat run for a moment and had a nice view port in the front of my window. I was ready. It was an ice storm dream and I was ready to conquer and go see my college lady and I did the amazing, I backed out of the driveway. No issue, I only slipped a little. Putting the car in drive I began to work my way around the turn back to the main road and success. (Success spelled as a place across town)
I was ready and that is when the car started slipping. I had never realized there was a slight hill to get out of the subdivision and as I tried to get up it the car would slide backwards, then up it again, and back again. The angle was less than 5 degrees, but it was enough as I went up again, and slid back again. Well, my poor car had horsepower to spare, after all I had raced it and proved it so I did the only logical thing, I pressed down to go faster, and, as you would expect, slid backwards.
It was at this point that the cold outside must have lowered my fever enough to inject some sense into me and I realized a few things. 1) I was out in an ice storm that had literally inches of ice on trees and I could hear them breaking. 2) I did not wear a coat out in this ice storm in my haste to get where I thought I should be going. 3) I did not bring my glasses and I was never blind, in an ice storm in my car with no coat. 4) I was feverish and should be in bed.
Clarity hit like it should have, somewhere between brick in the head (Krazy Kat Ignatz) and a box of TNT (Courtesy of Acme originally addressed to a coyote). I somehow got the car to the side of the road next to the curb, turned it off and tried to get out of the drivers door only to find I could not stand on the road, so I got out of the passenger door and walked on the crunchy grass 10 houses to home, went inside, turned on my black and white tv. Sorry, no movies on demand back then, 3 stations talking about the ice storm and KET (Educational TV that usually was playing something very boring except on Monty Python night). I feel asleep and woke up the next morning without the fever and feeling a lot better.
So as the sun sets on another day, there is a moral to this long winded recital of a past memory. The moral is, sometimes we don’t see the world as it is, and when we don’t reality can hit us hard. At the same time, a weird side moral is the fight to get somewhere can be as exciting as getting there, or at least as entertaining, and maybe another that sometimes you just go with the flow, and chill out. (and raw horsepower does not work on ice) Well, maybe I learned a lot that night, and that was the moral of it all anyway. Anyway, take a moment, and when life gives you an ice storm, instead of rushing over top to defeat it, take it slow, enjoy the moment, and smile at the crystals, no matter what.
Sleep sweet, stay warm, and be amazing every day…