A Final Thought: Tales of Winter
By Mitch Allen
It is mid-February when seasonal affective disorder peaks and I fall into the pit of despair—the cold, the snow, the grey skies, the still-short days. I try to go south in late winter, but not this year. Instead I’m headed to Traverse City, Michigan, to go ice fishing with some buddies.
It’s madness, I know, but it’s on my bucket list. I turned 60 last month so I need to start scratching things off.
None of us has ever been ice fishing and we do not want to die, so we’ve hired an adventure company to handle the details—finding the lake, bringing the fishing gear, the bait, setting up the heated shelter, drilling the hole, cleaning the fish. All we will have to do is stand around, drink bourbon, and discuss man things, like the pros and cons of blitzing the weak side linebacker in a third-and-long situation, IPAs, prostate health, torque.
My wife doesn’t believe in torque. She says it’s a made-up word men use when we don’t know the real answer, so I play along. When she asks about a clogged sink, the sound not working on the TV, or brown spots on lawn, I answer, “Okay, let me adjust the torque.”
Pooper Scooping
Our dog Bogart won’t go far out into the backyard to do his business. The snow is over his head so he hunkers down near the backdoor. It’s going to be a problem in a couple of weeks. I figure twice a day for 45 days means 90 piles of poop, and as the designated household pooper scooper, the cleanup will fall to me.
It disgusts my family but I pooper scoop with hands covered in disposable gloves. Those shovel-and-rake combinations just make a big mess. With disposable gloves I can maneuver my fingers gently through the blades of grass as if lifting a baby bird, capturing the entire load with a single effort without damaging my pristine lawn. The method also allows me to inspect closely what I am scooping up.
From a distance my wife shouts, “Oh, no, Bogart has blood in his stool!”
But I scoop it up and say, “Insofar as we are raising our grandsons gender neutral, I can assure you there is no blood in Bogart’s stool. This is simply a gnarled, ruby-red, high-heeled Barbie shoe.”
Raising a boy gender neutral is not complicated. When he asks for a Wonder Woman action figure in the toy aisle at Target, all you have to do is refrain from saying, “Put that back. It’s a girl toy,” and say instead, “You can have any toy you want as long as it’s less than $20.”
“Poppy, is this rechargeable, ride-on, jumbo excavator with real working headlights less than $20?”
“No, it’s $400.”
“Okay, I’ll take Wonder Woman.”
The Snowman
My grandsons and I made a snowman in our front yard and he is one dapper gent—a body of three perfectly spherical balls of snow, a carrot nose, charcoal eyes, two symmetrical multi-forked sticks for arms, an expensive designer scarf, and a top hat. He’s so perfect that passersby stop in front of our house to take selfies. At my age I thought I no longer needed positive reinforcement from strangers, but seeing people stop and take photos of your snowman makes you feel like Michelangelo.
The top hat, by the way, came from my Halloween costume the year I dressed as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. Between the hat and the platform shoes, my height rose from 5-foot-11 to 7-foot-2. It was empowering to tower over people and be forced to lower my head in doorways.
Of course when you see a real 7-foot person, please don’t ask if they play basketball. It’s a stereotype, it’s rude, and they’ve been asked that question by strangers a hundred times before. After all, 7-foot people don’t walk up to you and ask, “Are you a sumo wrestler?”
Curling
My next-door neighbor has joined a curling league. Every Wednesday night he travels to an ice rink to push a polished stone on the ice, vigorously sweeping the surface with brushes to reduce friction, allowing the stone to travel straighter and farther. It’s like shuffleboard except you’re doing it on ice instead of on the deck of a luxury cruise liner in the Caribbean. More madness.
He was, however, smart enough to hire a professional snow plow company this year while I was not. I’ve had to shovel my own driveway—twice. I was relieved to discover that my heart didn’t race, I wasn’t out of breath and I wasn’t sore, at least not until 36 hours later when I couldn’t lift my arms, which were as useless as sticks on a snowman.