COLUMN: It Can Get That Bad

By Tobin Barnes
Haven’t written in about three weeks.

Needed a break. Needed to experience some writelessness. Needed to hunker down in it. Needed to get bored so I’d think writing might be a good idea again.

Well, I’m there faster than I thought.

That’s because it’s day three of our captivity. And nothing has changed in all that time.

They’ll need extra-big equipment to clear the road in our subdivision. We’re out here on a few acres about four miles outside town. If there’s life beyond the snow drifts, we’ve seen no evidence of it yet. Won’t get paroled until we hear a big engine moving snow and that beep, beep, beep as it backs up to take another run at it.

Never thought I’d long for that sound.

Problem is they’ll need extra-big equipment everywhere else, too. Who knows when our turn will come. And the temperatures are too cold for the kind of melting we need.

It’s not a recipe for freedom.

Sometimes I get the creepy feeling we’ll never get out of here. Isolation does that to you. Makes you feel like you’re the surprised victim in a Stephen King novel. You’d never volunteer to be in one of his books. But here I am. The five-foot drift outside our window at times takes on a malevolent aura.

Yeah, it was that kind of blizzard.

Heavy winds compacted the foot of snow to the consistency of concrete...almost. Dogs can walk over it, but when you try the same you break through. Then it’s a struggle. If the dogs could laugh, they would. You can see them trying.

Makes you wish you hadn’t tried to be a dog walking over a snow bank. Getting out turns into exercise the intensity of climbing Mt. Everest.

Only good a four-wheel drive will do you in this kind of snow is give you the false impression you can drive through it. Been there, done that. A few times. Won’t do it again. I’m not as dumb as I’ve behaved in the past. Need extra-big equipment to bust it up first.

By the way, where the hell is it?

There’s a fine line between not having enough time to do what you want to do and having too much time to do what you want to do. In other words, life plays with you. You’re the ball.

Now I’ve got too much time. Feel like old flattened gum on a linoleum floor.

When I’m teaching school, it’s rush, rush, rush. When I’m home for a couple snow days, it’s lounge, lounge, lounge. Where’s the happy medium? Why isn’t it ever rush, lounge, rush, lounge, rush, lounge?

Somebody screwed up big time. I could have designed life better.

At first, a snow day sounds nice.

But the glow of idleness is short lived. It takes only a couple hours to do all the things you don’t have time for on a work day, and that includes being happy that it’s a snow day and eating some pancakes.

After that, the hours start to drag. Before long, you’ve come to despise newscaster banter, so-called television drama and laugh tracks.

But if the electricity goes out, you’re overcome in a suicidal sweat.

By noon of the third day, the only thing left is writing a column.

Yeah, it gets that bad.