To say that weather makes people do crazy things might be a bit of an understatement. Unfortunately, when the unpredictability of weather mixes with the paranoid insanity of Chicagoans-At-Large, trouble usually starts a-brewin. Take tonight, for example. We have a family of neighbors just next door to us who take to a winter wonderland celebration of reserving their freshly shoveled parking spaces with large orange cones. Throughout the day as they drive their minivan and suburban-with-the-charming-bullet-hole-stickers back and forth throughout the city, nobody quite knows where they head off to. And yet the cones remain, holding their spots, preserving their shovel-laden craftsmanship.
Until tonight.
It seems that a rather inventive and ambitious group of people decided to forego the “cones = a saved spot” arrangement held by these neighbors and not only took the spot, but also took the cones with them to their destination down the block. The paranoid insanity reared its head in the form of these neighbors promptly running outside and taking turns pouring snow all over the surface of the said car – up into the cavities of the tires, over the surface of each window, on every crevice. Truly detailed work. Practiced, even. And following about 35 minutes of standing in pajama pants, taking turns with the shovel, even after cops were called and numerous people walked outside to complain, their defiant “f**k off these people deserve it, keep on movin, seeya later suckers!” mantra wore thin (when presented repeatedly to each of their neighbors) and they walked inside, though only at the humble request of the police – on their third trip around the block.
Its at this point that the hopelessness of the city took hold of me and the realization surfaced that people like this actually do exist, albeit in some de-evolved state, with nothing better to do than ruin someone else’s night, or morning, over a parking spot. The fact that basic decency, whether it be from some place within themselves, or in the nudgings of a few concerned onlookers, doesn’t seem to exist in people such as these – well, it leads to a place that holds too many weird and unfortunate possibilities.
I tried going to bed and tossed and turned for a bit.
That is, until just a few minutes later when the sound of shoveling once again crossed the silence of our apartment. We looked out the window, once again, to see a single man working quickly with a shovel to clean off the surface of the car. He deflected angry yells from the neighbors, warming in their front room on permanent lookout for these “horrible people that took their spot”, while meticulously scraping the snow out from around the tires, off the hood and even out from under the doorhandles. I watched for a few minutes before going out and asking if he needed some help. He wished me a good night, but said he had it covered. I told him that he was a good man.
It’s at this point that, while walking back into our apartment, hope returned. And my numb, desperate prayer from this morning – the first in many, many weeks, was answered: “somehow, help me see the Kingdom today.”
The irony of this whole weather aspect, is that I can look out my window at just this moment and see the beginnings of a 12 hour weather storm that will dump up to a half a foot of snow across Chicago tonight. While the neighbors may have tried hard to set this car apart in a pile of snow, it seems that the weather itself may have its own similar wrath across every other car on our street. Their handiwork won’t have shown too clearly come morning. I’m just happy to have seen the bright side, before the sun comes up.
Filed under: Culture, Reflections, chicago storm, devolving?, hope, humanity, insanity, parking cones, snow, the kingdom, weather
Presently Jon (I) works (work) as a web coordinator for a non-profit organization in the suburbs and attends a city college downtown. Spending as much time as he does in the suburbs, sometimes he has to shed the reality of polos and khakis. On those days, he rides his bike.
