musings

First Snow Freak-Out

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

I remember my first solo flight into a snow-filled ditch. I was 17 or so, driving a red ’83 Lynx (Mercury’s version of the Escort), headed to my high-school girlfriends house 20 minutes away. It had snowed in the morning, then warmed during the day to a slushy mess that froze into deep ruts in the evening. I could feel the car’s tires jumping sideways, trying to find a groove, as I drove — still, I was going too fast. Finally I caught the right rut, and it spun 180 degrees and then sideways into a snowbank.

I blinked, exhaled, and let my hands fall from the wheel. I thought a moment, then tried the accelerator to move the car forward. The tires spun. I tried reverse. Same.

I put the car in park, shoved open the door and stepped knee-deep into snow. No way I was getting out. Some Lynx.

I walked a short distance to a nearby farmhouse and asked if I could call my father. They obliged — probably even offered to pull me out, but I figured Dad would want the honor. He rumbled up 10 minutes later in Old Blue, a multicolor F-150 4×4, circa 1978, with a homemade plow on the front. He described what he figured happened, and was spot on, as usual. Then he hooked the pickup onto the Lynx with a yellow nylon tow strap and jerked the little car clear of the ditch.

“You want me to follow you home, or are you gonna follow me?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to your girlfriend’s?” he replied.

“I just figured since the roads are bad and you had to…”

He cut me off: “The only way to learn to drive in it is to drive in it, so get going — but slow down!”

I’ve been off the road a few times since, all from driving too fast for conditions — but not in years, knock on wood. I’ve finally learned the age-old lesson of the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race.

Note that it’s “slow and steady” — not painfully slow. And not fast, like the foolish hare. Slow. And steady.

I raise this issue because each year in Minnesota, we commuters experience what I’ve come to call the First Snow Freak-Out. When the first snow sticks to the road, no matter how much or how little, how wet or how powdery, most of the driving population immediately divides into one of two camps:

  • 85 percent go hypervigilant — these you can tell by their wide, scared-rabbit eyes peering past the wheel and into the snowy haze; by their clenched teeth and white knuckles … and by the fact that they aren’t moving.
  • 10 percent go snow-leopard, roaring past the gridlocked masses, blazing their own trail around, over and through whatever is in their path, slinging road grime on on the windshields of the hapless herd, and laughing into their cell phones … until Mother Nature casually flicks them into the median.

The remaining 5 percent pass our 30-miles-in-2-hours-40-minutes commute by shifting our manual transmissions from first to second and back and improvising profanity laced lyrics to the Christmas carols on the radio (only the secular ones; the Christian songs afford the opportunity to weep).

Thirty miles in two hours and forty minutes. Because people couldn’t grasp the concept of a consistent 30 miles an hour. Three-quarters of an inch of snow on the pavement, and I saw cars snared in sumac, perpendicular to the roadway. I saw a semi facing the wrong way alongside the interstate. I saw two crumpled SUVs on the shoulder. And I saw miles and miles of brake lights.

And the truth is, it happened during the second snow, because the first came in October but didn’t last. Everyone forgot their autumn lessons, so December provided remediation, I guess.

Fortunately, this snow seems to be staying. That first evening was awful. The next day I worked from home, but the traffic reports were terrible. When I returned to work the following day, the roads were clear and dry, and stayed that way until yesterday. New snow in the morning, and traffic moved a consistent 15 to 20 miles an hour — too slow, perhaps, but at least steady.

Today, everyone was in sync. Congratulations, Minnesota — you survived the First Snow Freakout. Again.

Trevor’s Latest

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Blogger’s Note: This blog serves many purposes: instant writer gratification, testing ground for new ideas, opportunity to spout off … and, importantly, archive of cute Thorplet anecdotes. This post falls firmly into that category. (I apologize that one of these is a Facebook rerun from Jodi’s page, but Facebook is temporary. Werd-Fu is forever.)

First, a conversation between Trevor and Jodi on Monday:

Trevor: “Mom, is there really an Easter Bunny?”

Jodi: “What do you think?”

Trevor: “Wow, there really is! But mom, I didn’t know a bunny could hide eggs when it is hopping. It should be the Easter kangaroo!”

I especially love his reaction to the question, “What do you think?” That question is, hands down, the best parental response to any faith-related question from a child age 7 or less. They want to believe!

Now, a couple of gems from today. First, while he was eating lunch, completely out of the blue he said:

“Dad, if you have one more than an even number, then you can have a middle, right?”

Absolutely right. He claimed he was just thinking about it, and it came to him on the spot.

A little while later, while I was standing on a snowy front step, calling Puck:

“Dad, if I was you and I was outside, I would say, ‘Meow!’ because dogs like to chase cats!”

I tried it in the house a bit later. Puck looked disgusted.

Omen

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

There are Mondays, and Mondays. The start of every work week is a challenge, and in my case, the start of a Board week (a week in which the University’s Board of Regents is meeting) is especially heavy, because it promises to be a stressful, busy, and tied-and-jacketed week.

But this Monday morning seemed particularly ominous, even for a Board week.

I drove in early to get a jump on the week’s work. I arrived on campus between 6:30 and 7 a.m. and found myself alone on the sidewalk from the parking ramp to my office save one other person, an older women with a long black coat and black knit cap, hunched against the cold. I shivered a bit myself; it hadn’t seemed so chilly when I left home, but on campus there was a dampness in the air that was hard to shrug off.

Ahead, three dark shapes flapped across the street, from one tree to the next, too quickly to identify. I exhaled a soft sigh, and watched the grey vapor float up, up in the light of the street lamp overhead. As I raised my eyes, I noticed the moon, waning yellow in the dark blue predawn haze. Suddenly a caw, and a another black shaped flapped quickly past, momentarily eclipsing the moon.

The crow had startled me, and as I reached the intersection with the silent women, we stopped and stared as from the countless campus trees ahead, scores of black crows rose in unison and passed overhead, cawing accusations and jeers. The two of us watched them pass over us, dumbstruck, and the cold settled deeper still into our shoulders. When the light changed, we hurried to our offices.

Blogger’s Note: For past posts on crows, go here. I seem to have a “thing” for them.

A Love Letter … To You

/ J. Thorp / 5 Comments

I’ve made a lot of choices
Most have not been wise
But I have some really good friends
I’ve been fortunate enough to find
They get through the lonely days
When I want to stay inside myself
They get me out of my shell
Out into the world …

Heartless Bastards, “Hold Your Head High“

I used to think I was good at being alone. I remember my last two years of college in Connecticut, with my future bride half a country away, I felt like I had being alone down to an art form. I had routines. I got sleep. I listened to my own music, watched Polish movies no one else wanted to, ate in the dining halls when most of my friends moved off campus, worked 20+ hours a week and still went to class. I got stuff done, talked to Jodi on the phone (and chatted online, before we knew what it was called), and was generally a pretty happy guy.

I remember when I discovered I wasn’t good at being alone. I went to Chicago for a conference. It was around Christmas, a few years after Jodi and I married. Certainly we had Brendan, maybe Gabe, too. I remember wandering downtown the first evening, wrapped like a package in my old wool overcoat and scarf, enjoying the swirling snow, the glittering lights, and the bustle of holiday traffic on the Miracle Mile. I remember the brief pang in my chest as I thought, Jodi would enjoy this. I remember calling home from the hotel, then settling in for a long winter’s nap.

I lay awake a long time. I tossed and turned, turned on the tube, discovered that old truth of cable (hundreds of channels and nothing on), and nonetheless watched parts of several movies. I finally drifted off in the wee hours, woke tired at the alarm’s cry, and shuffled off to the conference’s morning session.

By the end of the first full day, all of things that sparked wonder the previous day now only increased the hollow ache in my chest. I wanted to go home. I was a family man.

In college and thereafter, I discovered something else about me: not only am I not good at being alone or apart from the people I love, but I also tend toward being an all-or-nothing friend. I’m either right there with you, deeply, personally, and for the long haul, or I’ll give you the old reverse nod and try to remember your name. I’m terrible with names, worse with birthdays and such, I generally hate phone calls, and, as a writerly sort, I can’t send a casual email to anyone I don’t feel I know pretty well. (My casual emails are studiously so, and I have the obsessive habit of re-reading them after I send them and wishing I’d worded them differently. Sometimes I’ll clarify with a P.S. after the fact.) So you might imagine that maintaining a casual acquaintance isn’t easy for me.

But I like people. Too much, sometimes. I like people to the point that I get emotional when strangers do. I like people to the point that when they do bad things I’m shocked and disappointed, almost moreso than angry. I like people with views so counter to mine that my guts tie in knots in anticipation of when it’ll all blow up. I practice what I’ll say when it does, in my head so you can’t hear, hoping that it’s the right combination of words that will convey vehement disagreement and utmost affection.

Somebody told me a couple of weeks ago that I don’t seem like an insecure guy. Maybe I’m not. But I want to do right by you. All of you. It’s completely naive and idealistic and impossible. It’s exhausting at times, and about every two weeks I want to secede from society. I want to pull into my shell just so I can breathe.

You people invariably coax me out again. Today, dozens of you took a second to wish me a happy birthday, in the midst of a stressful, eat-at-your-desk, student-protest-outside-the-window, what-the-hell-am-I-doing kind of Tuesday. Facebook, of course, has made the casual friendship so easy that even I can do it now, but still—you took a couple seconds out of your day to brighten mine. Why did you do that? Maybe you’re thinking it’s not big deal, but I smiled through the sporadic train wrecks of the day because you decided to burn a moment on me.

Do you realize what that is? There’s a word for it, one we use in a million wrong ways and are too often afraid to use right. Yup. That one.

So I’ll say it, and may your cheeks burn to hear it: I love you. Yes, even you. And don’t worry if you were about to let me have it regarding something I said or did. Go ahead. It’s gonna be okay; I’ve got it all planned out.