Maybe it's a sign of my essential immaturity, but I get excited when I wake up in the morning and find that it's snowed overnight. A poet or a deep thinker would look on a thick, virginal layer of new snow and marvel at how meaningful it is - a symbol of the fresh starts and beauty and hope. An artist would look at it and admire the play of light and shadow on the snow - how it gives a blue aura to everything around it and makes it beautiful. When I look at snow, a hyperactive eight year-old deep inside of me dances around the rooms of my subconscious singing, "Yay! Yay! No school today," whooping and scattering toys across my id.
Of course there IS school. Once you are an adult, there is ALWAYS school - or its grownup equivalent - work. Work is the price we pay for... for...er... well, presumably work pays off somewhere down the line. At any rate, it must be said that there is a certain thrill in the action of going to work very early in the morning on a snowy day.
It's a thrill that the police and the tow-truck guys are certainly feeling on the morning of this, the first real blizzard of the year. They are clearing my street. When I first moved into my apartment, my landlord had made a big deal of the fact that it has off-street parking. At the time, this had seemed like a fairly minor amenity, but now, as I watch the Snow Team tow away approximately 30 cars that have been parked on my street overnight, I start to see things a little differently.
I don't know the whole story. There has to be more to this situation than meets the eye. There has to be a really juicy story beneath the surface here - a story full of frustration, aggravation, petty feuds and (who knows?) perhaps an unhappy love affair. There has must be something like this lurking beneath the surface, because there HAS TO be a reason for the expressions on the faces of the Clan of the Tow-Truck - a radiant expression that can only be described as one of sheer glee - as they chain up the cars and haul them away.
As it turns out, I don't actually have to go to work today. This is a good thing, because I need to run an important errand this morning. I've got to go shopping for snowboots.
I've been thinking a lot about snowboots lately and I've set my heart on a proper, very SERIOUS pair of boots this year - not hip, fashionable, GQ-style boots, not hiking boots, not hunting boots, but proper winter boots. I've spent what seems like the better part of three winters in a row dealing with wet, cold feet and I am determined to stay dry this year.
Which is why I find myself standing in the Men's Ware section of K-Mart an hour or two later, staring at a rack of big, green rubber boots with yellow laces. THESE are serious boots! They are an adult version of the boots I wore in First Grade - the ones which, at my mother's insistence, I always wore with bread wrappers on my feet for that extra layer of protection from the elements. These are the kind of boots that can keep me safe!
Provided, of course, that I can find a pair in my size. There are seven pairs of boots on display here. One pair is a Size 6, presumably on the off-chance that a professional jockey will find himself stranded in New Hampshire by a storm like this and will need to protect himself from the elements as he pushes his horse-trailer out of a snowbank. The other six pairs are all Size 13. As I see this, I start to rethink my jockey hypothesis and wonder if K-Mart was counting on the Circus being stranded in town.
I find it difficult to believe that a department store in New Hampshire would only have seven pairs of boots, so I look around for a sales clerk. I find one and ask her if there are any more boots.
"Boots?" she asks me with confusion in her eyes, as if I'd just asked her for an elephant de-tusker or scuba gear. "You mean, like for your feet?"
I nod and assure her that these are precisely the type of boots I have in mind. I point to the display rack with the big, green boots and ask if she has any more of these in stock. She walks over to the rack and stands in front of it, staring really hard for ten or fifteen seconds. She considers her answer very, very carefully before turning to me and responding.
"No," she says, then walks away.
This is such an unexpected answer that I am taken aback and start to leave. I am not quite to the door when the sales clerk catches up with me.
"Hey," she calls out, "I just had an idea. Why don't I check in the stock room and see if we have any MORE boots? Some of them may be in your size!"
Hooray!
It is only later in the morning, as I make my way through the snow-clogged streets of Manchester that I catch a glimpse of myself in a store window, waddling along in my big, green boots with the bright yellow laces.
I look like Christopher Robin with a glandular condition.
