A Snowed-in Story

Even though the snow fell too fast to stick and melted a while ago...

The thought of my pooch (who, by the way, needs more video time because he is entering the prime of his cleverness, cuteness, and awesomeness) stuck at home alone most of the week kills me, especially knowing that he watches through the windows as deer frolic lazily across the back hill, woodpeckers alight with a thud on the feeder and gorge themselves, and turkeys waggle their waddle in frenzied lines, pecking at whatever the woodpecker dropped.  The knowledge that the sun rises and sets without him feeling it on his hairy black back makes my stomach twitter.  And it was that guilt alone that drove me to leave during my prep period one Wednesday in order to come home, play with the trailer-bound dog, and brush my teeth, all before my 4pm dental cleaning.

It was all planned perfectly.  However, it had been snowing hard all day.  That snow, blizzard-like and falling thick, proved to be the bane of my existence. Well, the bane of my existence as it pertained to the 2-wheel-drive Chevy Impala rental with the oh-so-Montana sun roof.   I jump into its leather seat and hit the seat warmer button, luxuriate in the warmth crawling up my back, lock the doors and start the windshield wipers.

Eureka being a town laid out without much leveling, its streets undulate with the rolling hillside and stop at odd points, like the "street" the sedan is about to turn onto that requires one to stop, turn, go about 25 feet, and stop again, all on a fifteen to twenty degree slope, and without much else in the way of options to avoid using said silly street.  Naturally, the Impala stubbornly refuses to continue to the top of the slope, its wheels spinning and causing the car to turn in an ungraceful sideways motion, leaving me horizontal and halfway blocking all the roads.  The clock ticks on my window of dog/tooth-brushing time.

Behind me, two cars pull up and I embarrassingly see my students behind their wheels, ecstatically encouraging me to just back up and start over, a feat I realize I am totally incapable of doing.  So as they wait in a short line, I surf my ton of Florida retirement white sedan-ness on the white snow, slide down the slope, uncontrollably, narrowly missing a dumpster, until I finally nose the Impala back down the road.  I wave at my students in their four-wheel-drive trucks and plan a second attempt.  This involves not doing a 360 at the intersection but rather driving nearly out of town to find a safe, non-conspicuous spot to turn around in case others are watching. Five minutes later I make my way back to the same spot, eyeing traffic in every direction and, seeing no one through the blizzard, roll at about 25 mph through a stop sign, turning left, sliding up the slope, thus successfully navigating the second left turn at the intersection and, of course, not stopping at the second stop sign this time either.

Ahhh.  So, meandering along the serpentine road, snow falling even harder and now afraid of any incline or sharp turn, I come to another hill, the big one that leads to our home and, again eyeing traffic and seeing no one, I turn and momentum-push up the hill.  I get twenty-five feet and spin and sputter again, the sedan wheels refusing to grip any powder because they don't really know what to do with powder, forcing me to slow to a crawl in the half-foot snow, stuck once again.  Behind me, a school bus stops at the intersection I just blazed through.  It turns the other way, perhaps hearing my curses and seeing my precarious position in the middle of a long road up, but most likely filled with students wondering who that was angled in the road so weirdly. This time, I back down the road, pivot toward the road I came from, and sadly cancel my ticket to the dog-walking/tooth-brushing festival due to the utter futility of trying to go any further up that blasted hill.  So, I choose to drive to the dentist's office early, the thought of nature magazines in a waiting room somehow dissipating my disappointment.  Back down the roads I go, fortunately using all the downhill roads now, all of which end at the thoroughly-plowed main highway which, thankfully, also leads me to straight to the dentist's office.

Approaching the office driveway, my heart sinks as I see it has another fifteen-degree slope, and as I turn into it with momentum, I once more turn/surf/struggle and finally skid to a stop, revving the tires uselessly and stranding the Impala once more in a driveway, six feet from a row of parked cars, ten feet from the turned heads of waiting dentist patients, and about 20 feet from the ever-moving and rubbernecking cars rolling down the highway.  Now an A student of the Impala+snow=futility equation, I reverse and glide-slide down the driveway back to the road, almost as if I had planned it that way the whole time.  I turn left, find a parking spot in the laundromat about a hundred feet away, park the car, almost incinerating it with hate from my heart, and walk along the highway in the falling snow, arriving in the dentist's office right on time--a wet, sloppy, foul-mouthed mess--plopping myself in the chair of the way-too-smiley dental hygienist.  

She begins with some x-rays, and she asks me to open wide.  I stare straight ahead with a look of indifferent loathing at the snow out the window.  I open my mouth, receive the weird plastic cardboard thingy, calmly wait for the digital buzzing of x-ray weirdness to finish, open up, and deftly dislodge the plastic thingy from my clenched teeth, presenting it to her on the tip of my tongue.  So helpful on the outside am I, but my eyes staring straight ahead hide the death wishes I am exclaiming within.  Another round of x-rays go the same way, with me hoping the hygienist doesn't beg answers to any of her exuberant and well-meaning questions.  As she leaves I close my eyes and shoot daggers at random objects while my stomach does somersaults.  She returns to tell me that I take great photos.  I grunt with a slight smile, then close my eyes to receive the ice pick to my bocal bone structures.

Funny thing happened in that chair.  A dental cleaning brought peace to my troubled mind.

As you may know through unfortunate experience, there is an unusually helpless feeling found in in failing to command a large and reliable hunk of $20,000 metal up a fifteen degree slope or control its rapid sideways decent down said slope, with lives and cash and insurance claims helplessly falling into the tenuous balance with every misstep and spin.  To be at the mercy of such nasty weather makes one want to curl up, give up, pack it in, and seek the nearest possible comforting place.

In this case, laying back in the dentist's chair, following in my mind the ice pick as it stabs at the calc deposits on my teeth, explores every edge along the tender gum line, rakes between teeth with the sound of chalkboard fingernailings... all this focus on physical feeling (even nasty tooth scraping) took me away from thinking about the myriad, cumulative problems of lesson plans, assessments, ruminations on best practices for achieving Common Core standards, prom committee deadlines, yearbook deadlines, late work policies in winter sports seasons, and overall lack of motivation from my students.  All of this should be a shared responsibility with my students and colleagues to solve, but instead I put it squarely on my shoulders for some reason day after day in order to figure out my new profession in this new place.

In the end, analogies (i.e. a well-intentioned and perfectly capable car failing to make it up an easy hill coupled with the obvious solution of having the right tires to fit the road conditions and/or taking the path of least resistance) present themselves as long, extended, perfectly-placed metaphors.

Comments

Pastor Tim said…
See, that's what I need to read -- raw, unadulterated, snow-slogging experience filled with the honesty of confessing to shooting darts & daggers at a hygienist who was only trying to do her job with more than absentee 'have a nice day' care. And finding your own sense of compassion in the midst of it all. That's the stuff of life. Please write more, brother.