The Salute

More freezing rain. Predicted and delivered. On the way home from Robotics last night, Drew kept rolling down the window and sticking his hand out - must be he enjoys the sting of hard water driven into your fingers. "Ow! That hurts. This isn't frozen rain, its hail. Ow. Ow."

I knew morning would not be pretty. The weather guys on all the channels were out there experimenting with how long it would take to clear the frozen ice coating from your car - everything from just letting it warm up by itself to trying out different types of scrapers. Bottom line - give yourself extra time to unwrap the car.

I was half afraid I wouldn't be able to open the doors, but Baby cooperated fully. It was the trunk, where I keep the scraper in case the car doors are frozen shut, that needed some coaxing. It would have been a lot easier if it hadn't been snowing big wet sloppy flakes that covered everything an inch deep just in the ten minutes I was out there scraping the windows clear.

I stomped back into the house covered like a snowman and sogging wet, shaking off the white globs like a dog shakes its coat clear of water. Drew has been much better about getting up these days - mornings are considerably easier. We climbed in the car, backed out of the space with no problem, and headed towards the carpool pickup point.

As I drove down the main drive, almost all of the cars had their windsheild wipers pulled away from the windshield to avoid being frozen down. The arms pointed straight into the air, some with the blades removed for good measure, leaving stumps of metal punctuating the snow-filled vista.

It was ludicrous. I felt like a five star general reviewing the troops all standing at attention. I started to giggle. When did this become an accepted winter measure? Who started it? How did it catch on? Did it do any good, really? After all, you still have to chip the ice from the windsheild before you can even consider driving.

No matter. We reviewed the ranks properly, then backed into my waiting space, my own windsheild wipers flopping back and forth periodically, keeping the sloppy white stuff from drowning us. I wonder if Baby got a kick out of it?