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Dear Jake,
Earlier today I spent a few moments with this infamous blue snow shovel, reminiscing back 20 years while clearing snow from my driveway and sidewalk.
The Infamous Blue Snow Shovel
In 1998, the second year of our marriage, your mom and I moved into our first home — it was a small rental home at 1405 Hughes Avenue in Flint. In our first year of marriage, we had lived in an apartment, so we were happy to have moved into a house, even though it was very small.
Part of living in a house included outdoor responsibilities — mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, etc. So that first winter, I bought this blue snow shovel. It has held up well over the years, with a fiberglass handle and a tough plastic for the shovel itself.
The driveway was maybe 3-4 cars long, but it sloped downhill from the house to the street, while the lawn on either side was level with the house, creating this odd funnel in the driveway that was a challenge to shovel.
And then, of course, there were the times when the street plows would come through and clear the streets, depositing a sizable pile of snow, slush, and ice at the end of the driveway, which also had to be cleared.
On this one particular instance, we had gotten a very heavy snowfall, and I’d spent a considerable amount of time clearing the driveway. We left home for some errand or event, only to return home and discover that the street plows had come through while we were gone, and the pile of icy snow at the end of our driveway was too large for us to get the car into the driveway. If I had tried it, I would have damaged the front end of the car.
So I went and got my trusty blue snow shovel and went to work. But the mass of icy snow at the end of our driveway had frozen and was too hard for the shovel to break up. I worked and worked at it, and the longer I worked, the more frustrated I became at my lack of progress.
Finally, in a moment of pure frustration, I took the shovel to fling it aside. The problem was, that was the moment the shovel decided to take on the flight aspects of a frisbee, and defying all laws of design, physics, and gravity, that snow shovel simply sailed up the driveway and came to rest on the roof of the house!
I stood there in disbelief, and within a few seconds, I heard Melissa laughing behind me, and the longer and harder she laughed, the funnier it became. I could even laugh at myself and the absurdity of the situation.
So now this snow shovel is a special memento for me. I don’t use it often, as I now have other snow shovels and even a nice snowblower, but every once in a while, on days like today, I use that shovel and remember the event like it happened yesterday.
Thank you, Melissa, for helping me learn that it’s OK to laugh at myself when things don’t go according to my plan.
