Brain

Today I am grateful I have a brain.  I think some of my neighbors (in a 55 plus community) have lost theirs!  A man who is at least in his 80’s, was out there yesterday before it stopped snowing, fretting over his driveway, shoveling and salting like a wildman.  I don’t know how he did it but he got his car stuck up on the curb.  Not just in the ten-inch-deep snow.  On the curb, too. 

Another couple of senior neighbors had to shovel–push-lift and grind him out.  He dumped enough bags of salt under the wheels to coat the rims of every margarita in Nogales! Salt doesn’t help.  It just makes it slicker than a hounds tooth.  Sand or kitty litter might have helped, but pretty much there is no help for someone like this.  Stay in your house!  Where on earth did he have to go?  NO PLACE!  Maybe it’s me, but I just can’t do anal retentive anymore.  But I want to be a good neighbor so I stayed ready-at-the-phone, in case the whole bunch started keeling over from heart attacks.  Use your brains, people!

In fall I didn’t run out and buy long, orange, thin rods to stick in the ground to outline my driveway, like many neighbors did.  The rods are supposed to indicate to the snow plow drivers know where the edge is.  The snow plow drivers don’t care.  Really.  They laugh at the rods.  I would, too, if I were them.  Another bunch also shovel snow, every time, not just cleaning up the edge a little, or the light snows, but big, heavy, wet snow like this is.  Why?  I moved to this place and pay a substantial amount of money each month, through the homeowner’s association, to have the grass mowed and the snow plowed. 

In summer the same guy with the Pit Crew and the dangling car uses an old push mower on his front lawn.  I’m not talking about the kind you put gas in and it goes vroom-vroom.  I’m talking a really old one with curvy blades that goes clickity-click.  He uses a scissors to edge.  No joke.  A scissors.  Then up goes the “DO NOT MOW!” sign so the lawn service doesn’t touch it.  I’m thinking, geeze buddy, relax.  You’ve already proven yourself.  These are your golden years.  No one cares if your lawn makes the cover of Lawn’s R-Us.

We have snow hanging in the trees like mutant cotton.  The plows have come through. Long, orange, thin, metal rods are strewn everywhere, like pick-up-sticks thrown by a recalcitrant toddler.  Not one is anywhere near a driveway edge.  It looks like the front yards are being treated with Chinese acupuncture.  Happy New Year!  

I didn’t shovel a flake because I pay to have it done. . . and I have a brain.