One man’s voice

Having a Chevy Chase morning

Posted on December 18th, 2006 in General

Sometimes it is better to just stay in bed. Of course, when you have a family of seven to provide for, that option is almost never an option. So, I get up and get ready to go to work when I am supposed to.

Today was one of those mornings. Get up, take a shower, iron my shirt (and let the dryer iron my pants ), make some coffee, yadda yadda. Today is also garbage pick up day, and me being the ever ‘too tired tonight but I’ll get to it in the morning’ kind of guy, I decided I’d go take the garbage cans to the street. No big thing really. Except that I noticed while outside that it was exceptionally cold. And that my car, like so many others, had ice on the windshield.

Just before getting ready to leave my wife asked me if I had started my car yet. I told her I hadn’t but it sounded like a good idea and that I might just go do that. So I filled up a pitcher of cold water (so as not to shatter my windshield) and headed out to the car. And this is where this ordinary morning took a turn for the worse.

As I got to my car I placed my pitcher of water on the hood. I opened my doors, started the car and noticed that the car was rolling slowly down my driveway. So I pulled the emergency brake to stop the rolling and in doing so manage to spill all of the water onto the hood of my car. “But I can live that” I thought to myself. “I’ll just go get some water from the garden hose.”

So I went to the water hose in the front yard, turned it on and watched as the beautiful color of rust came splashing out of my hose. Not to be daunted by this, I figured I’d let the funk of that water run off before I filled the pitcher. So as I let the water get clearer I noticed that my left shoe was wet. Looking over to my left side I realized that our hose decided to spring a leak and that it was leaking all over my left shoe. Again, I am cool as cucumber, so I just gracefully move my left foot away from the spraying water.

A few seconds later I began to feel cold. Not the cold of the 34 degree morning air but the cold of spraying water soaking the left side of my body. You see, that little leak in the hose was a bit bigger than I thought it was. It in fact was large enough to spray me from my left shoe to just under my left armpit. Excellent. What better to go with a cold morning chill than cold funky water embedded into my clothes.

After pulling myself from the chill of the cold morning outside shower I just took, I refocused and remembered that I had still not watered my car. So I went and poured the cold water onto my windshield and reached into the passenger side of my car to turn on the windshield wipers. For a brief second I thought something had went right as I watched the water and ice get splashed from one side of the glass to the other. Of course, I was hopefully, and naively, optimistic.

Looking across my car to the driver side door, I noticed that I had not closed my door all the way when I was rushing out of the car as my first pitcher of water had spilled. Thanks to that little oversight, the water and ice that was being wiped off of my windshield were now being wiped into my driver-side seat and door panel. So not only did I get to drench myself with cold water just minutes before leaving for work, I got to spend a 30 minute drive sitting on a wet seat as well.

But my windshield was clear. And I suppose that is what I was after to begin with, huh?