It was only -17C this morning but still I had to scrape off and warm up the car hopefully without stumbling this time and helplessly sliding down the sloped driveway screaming towards the merciless blade of the gigantic plow that marauds our street in these ridiculous hours because I once again forgot to purchase road-salt at the beer store.

So after I quickly threw on multiple layers of clothes, scarves, duct-tape, old newspaper and my jacket before stuffing pillows into every available space I then set myself on fire, opened the front door and charged towards my car with the ice-scraper in hand like a war-crazed native from a dense jungle wall.

As I was viciously scraping the impenetrable ice from my windshield my next door neighbor casually strolled out of his garage whistling Niel Young with his hands shoved deep into his pockets as if it were a calm spring morning. I scraped faster trying to avoid eye contact which was an exercise in futility because he was standing right beside me.

“Hey Neighbor! Nice crisp morning, ain’t it?”
“Crisp.” I said. “Like lettuce.”

I scraped even faster. You could barely see the scraper by this point it was moving so fast. He started wandering around my car.

“You get any letters from the city?”
“no…lettt..tt..err…s..s.” My teeth were chattering and starting to crack. Please go away, please please go away and I’ll never jerk off again. I thought.
“Well, welly well well…I got a couple.” He exclaimed as though the very idea of it aroused him. “One for my truck being a couple inches out onto the sidewalk overnight and another for the sidewalk not being cleared.”
“That’s horribb..bb..bb..le.” By this point there were icicles forming in my esophagus and my eyes were crystalizing.

He obviously didn’t share my pain because he was a polar bear of a man and had a lot more blubber encasing his bones than my South American ass. But I couldn’t be anything but nice to him because he was always kind and plowed our driveway whenever it snowed so I occasionally cut the eternally joyous fuck’s lawn in the summer.

I was just about done and he was strolling towards the road where his wife was calmly seated in their nice warm minivan when he turned to me and began talking about the weather just as I was about to scurry back inside like a cockroach when the lights came on.

I thought about killing him to end my misery. Sometimes certain things had to be done and this was why people turned on each other. I could lunge forward and ram the scraper into his throat, thus rendering it futile for him to breathe. I could picture his huge head turning beet-red as he helplessly clutched at his crushed larynx until he fell lifelessly backwards to thud against the pavement.

But then there was his wife that had witnessed it. Would have to take care of her too and then ditch the minivan. Fuck, that might make me late for work.

Yes, when you are talking to someone who is quickly turning into a snowman this is what is rolling through their head. Be kind to your neighbors who are not whale-seals like your complacent couch-eating selves and just let them scrape for God’s sake or maybe next time you’ll end up garbage-bagged under a foundation of the housing project across the field wondering what was going to happen on the next episode of Duck Dynasty.

Slide.