“Ugh, another snowstorm?! Where do they all come from?!”
“Umm… the troposphere?”
“Ha-ha, my sides are splitting. I just can’t take the futility of it all, you know?”
“No.”
“You know! The whole ‘gotta clean off the car and shovel out the driveway’ five billion times, and then once more after the storm finally stops a month later. And, again when the plows trap us in. Again.”
“Well, it can’t be helped, and at least you’re physically able to do it. And have a car and a driveway that need snow removed from them.”
“I know, but I don’t wanna!”
“Almost sorry to say that you have no choice: you’ll still be expected at work the next day, and unless you want to get up at 3 in the morning, you have to clear out everything by tonight and hope the snow doesn’t start up again while you’re asleep. And I’m not coming over to help – I’ve got my own digging out to do.”
“Exactly! We’re all trapped in this endless cycle of snow removal! And what galls me is that it’s absolutely pointless! We almost destroy ourselves removing the same frozen water over and over again, when if we’d just waited patiently, the Sun would do all the work for us – ohhhhh....”
“‘Ohhhhh,’ what?”
“I just came up with a genius plan.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Want to hear it?”
“Not particularly – bye.”
“…Absolute genius!”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hi, Boss – <Potato-chip-chewing noises> just letting you know I’m calling out sick today < Potato-chip-chewing noises>.”
“Really.”
“Oh yeah – <Potato-chip-chewing noises> I got this cough – <Cough – Potato-chip-chew – Cough-Cough-Cough> and a runny nose, and body aches, and I’m whipping up a fever as we speak.”
“You got a doctor’s note?”
“…We need those?”
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
“Always.”
“Oh. Well, I really am sick < Potato-chip-chewing noises>.”
“Mm-hm: with what?”
“Sick of cleaning off my car and driveway over and over when it’s all gonna melt in two days!”
“That’s two days’ pay since the rest of us all manage to get into work without you.”
“Just put me down for Unexpected Paid Time Off or something – ”
“Oh, that you know about?”
“ – in the meantime, I refuse to participate in the perpetual snow removal conspiracy orchestrated by the shovel-scraper-snow-blower league a second longer!”
“Mm-hm: I’m writing you up for this.”
“Buuuuut I can still have the time off, yes? < Potato-chip-chewing noises>”
“Sure, you can have as much time off as you need, waiting for each and every one of those ice crystals to evaporate, until the entire mass is completely vanished from your car and driveway, no rush!”
“Wow, I had no idea you’d be so understanding about all this!... Hello?”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
“Hi there.”
“So, how did your snow-removal-by-sunlight experiment go?”
“Exactly as predicted: I’m currently relaxing on the couch, not a care in the world, accepting Nature’s processes and no longer fighting against her forces, allowing my car and driveway to gradually emerge from their frozen blankets millimeter-by-millimeter without me having to move a muscle, and it feel wonderful.”
“Great. Still have a job?”
“Oh no: they fired me on Day 2 of this.”
“Naturally.”
“BUT, they’re so desperate for help that I should get the call any moment now reluctantly taking me back, with a stern finger-wagging and a grim lecture on how I’d better not do anything like this ever again or that’ll really be it.”
“I believe it. So, how are the car and driveway doing with the evaporation technique, considering we had snow taller than most people this time around?”
“Oh, let’s see out the window… yes, they should be all clear at some point.”
“About when?”
“…June.”