“SCRAAAAAPE. PHISH PHISH PHISH. WEREREREREISSHSHH. SCCCRAAAAAAAAAPE…”
These were the sounds I awoke to last Thursday morning. Yawning, I reached for my cell phone to check the time. 8:15 am. Who was outside? And why had they chosen to wake me up, in my opinion, waaaay too early, on my precious vacation day? “SCREEEEEEEEEEEEPE.” I threw on my slippers and padded down into the kitchen, where I saw a sight I had never sighted before and never wish to sight ever again.
A small, wiry figure was shoveling snow off of our mostly-already-shoveled driveway. The hunched-over figure was wearing an old-lady scarf around her head and a hideously enveloping faded-plum colored winter coat. Black clogs stuck out the bottom of the all-encompassing coat, which had to come from the 1980s or earlier. Stringy grey-black hair peeked from under the scarf. It was clear in spite of the coat that the individual in question couldn’t have weighed more than 85 pounds. Mrs. Figg, the Squib from Harry Potter, was the first thought that flitted through my sleepy mind. My eyes widened as I realized who was actually shoveling my driveway.
“Janette—she’s literally going to keel over and die. And it will be on OUR PROPERTY!” (Janette found this amusing. I was half serious.)
The mysterious snow-shoveler is an old professor of mine from my undergraduate days. Now that I’m working at my alma mater once more, we have renewed communications. This particular professor has been working for the school since, I don’t know, 1872, and looks older than that. Her husband has also been at the school an equal length of time, and their years, added together, take us back to the early days of our great nation. A month ago I, perhaps foolishly, volunteered the downstairs of our little red house to one of her classes for a finals-week Christmas party. A party that was supposed to start at 10:45…not 8:15.
This professor has worked 18 hour days for as long as she’s been at school and had been predicted by most to die mid-sentence during a lecture. Apparently preparing for this party meant arriving close to three hours early. Janette convinced me to let her shovel in peace, as the driveway really didn’t need it and her OCD shouldn’t spoil my morning off. The doorbell rang close to 9 as she greeted me with an all-knowing smirk: “Well, I just got done shoveling your driveway.” (This should be translated: “I shoveled your driveway because you weren’t up early enough and didn’t have enough foresight to take care of it already so somebody obviously had to do it and woe is me, an old woman, whom the job fell upon.”) Refusing to give her the satisfaction, I informed her that we had been planning on shoveling (re-shoveling…) closer to when the students would arrive. This merited no response. After unloading mountains of food from her trunk, I watched and attempted to help her as she took over our downstairs, rearranged our furniture, and sent us on hunting expeditions for tablecloths and extra napkins. The food that I cooked for the party, at her previous insistence, was put in the oven. (VWH mysteriously disappeared within 10 minutes of her entry. He is VW indeed.) Again, keep in mind that all she originally asked for was our living room. I had two alumni friends visiting as well, and by the time the party wrapped up after 2 in the afternoon, our respective wills to live had been completely sucked out.
I have written before about power struggles between me and my mother regarding cleanliness and organization in the house. The next time my mom hosts a gathering and asks me for help, I will gladly offer it, thankful in my heart that all I have to do is set the table and vacuum. She is absolutely tame compared to what I endured last week.
I thought I had learned to say ‘no’ after a semi-breakdown following my junior year in college. I started to figure out that A: the world could go on without me, B: it was OK not to do everything, and C: I’m a much nicer person when I get enough sleep at night. I continued these improved habits through graduate school, but they have slipped drastically in the past month or so. They should invent some kind of dog collar for humans that zaps you if you are getting ready to agree to something stupid.
“Can you play piano for the early service in church tomorrow for free? You can sight-read all the stuff, right?”
“Well…I suppose I cou--<BRRRRZAAAAAAAAAPP>--YEEEEEEEOOOOOOWWW! I’m dreadfully sorry but I’m afraid not this time.”
It’d be Jiminy Cricket taken to a whole new level…Jiminy Cricket combined with Stanley Milgram.
(...The height of irony: my phone just rang with a potential part-time job offer that pays diddly-squat, but would be a neat musical opportunity. AND I DIDN’T SAY YES RIGHT AWAY. I didn’t say no either, but that’s progress, right?)
