how i spend vacation time
I went outside Thursday to shovel, not realizing how warm it was, and found that our sidewalk didn't need it. But I've been craving exercise, and so on a whim I went down to clear the annoying, slippery sidewalk in front of the empty house two doors down. It was compacted and heavy and so somewhat slow going, but satisfying.
However, when I was about 1/3 of the way through, a nattily dressed man (pressed grey overcoat, black fedora. think black preacher man) came by and energetically said "Let me help you!," pressed the bag and mail he was carrying into my hands and proceeded to shovel the entire rest of the patch, in a wider swath than I have been aiming for, at a frenetic, teenager-like pace. I tried to take back over once, but to no avail. It was clearly a matter of honor not to pass by a woman doing hard physical labor. Although at least he never actually made any condescending comments about it. He just cheerfully proceeded as if passersby took over each other's tasks all the time. Amusingly, when we was done speeding through, he wiped his brow and said "I don't like to do that. People get heart attacks doing that." What to say?
But he was friendly and I like talking with neighbors. And then the guy who runs the little model train store next door came out and said "Why'd you shovel that? It's not your job. We should call the city about it. I've been trying to find our who owns it. I took a bad fall there a few days ago when it was all icy." We had some chitchat about irresponsible owners and unresponsive city agencies, and then he got around to asking where I lived and about different people who lived there I danced around the relationships of all the people in the house. Then he said "One of the girls there writes for the Metroland." And I knew what was coming, but I admitted it was me.
"You wrote about my sign last year. That hurt."
I had, in passing, joked about how his sign read "Delaware Trains keep Christ in Christmas." in a column last winter. I suspected he'd read it because the sign changed the next day, but I hadn't known until this conversation that it was my mother-in-law who showed it to him (?!). In any case, he admitted that he'd been in printing for many years and recognized what he'd done as a major gaffe. But it still wasn't entirely clear that he wasn't still pretty grumpy about it. But still this was our first ever conversation, and it was civil and pleasant, so that has got to be going in the right direction.
However, when I was about 1/3 of the way through, a nattily dressed man (pressed grey overcoat, black fedora. think black preacher man) came by and energetically said "Let me help you!," pressed the bag and mail he was carrying into my hands and proceeded to shovel the entire rest of the patch, in a wider swath than I have been aiming for, at a frenetic, teenager-like pace. I tried to take back over once, but to no avail. It was clearly a matter of honor not to pass by a woman doing hard physical labor. Although at least he never actually made any condescending comments about it. He just cheerfully proceeded as if passersby took over each other's tasks all the time. Amusingly, when we was done speeding through, he wiped his brow and said "I don't like to do that. People get heart attacks doing that." What to say?
But he was friendly and I like talking with neighbors. And then the guy who runs the little model train store next door came out and said "Why'd you shovel that? It's not your job. We should call the city about it. I've been trying to find our who owns it. I took a bad fall there a few days ago when it was all icy." We had some chitchat about irresponsible owners and unresponsive city agencies, and then he got around to asking where I lived and about different people who lived there I danced around the relationships of all the people in the house. Then he said "One of the girls there writes for the Metroland." And I knew what was coming, but I admitted it was me.
"You wrote about my sign last year. That hurt."
I had, in passing, joked about how his sign read "Delaware Trains keep Christ in Christmas." in a column last winter. I suspected he'd read it because the sign changed the next day, but I hadn't known until this conversation that it was my mother-in-law who showed it to him (?!). In any case, he admitted that he'd been in printing for many years and recognized what he'd done as a major gaffe. But it still wasn't entirely clear that he wasn't still pretty grumpy about it. But still this was our first ever conversation, and it was civil and pleasant, so that has got to be going in the right direction.