Mark My Words and Happy Birthday, Heather

"Mark my words..." I was heard to exclaim twenty-four hours before this photo was snapped, "They have no idea what this storm is going to do between now and when it is supposed to get here. I bet it will miss us entirely!"

Well, I am prepared to say I was wrong. I usually call it right. I was really pretty certain this was a largely false alarm. Does this look false to you? Me neither.

After a marathon mutual shoveling/plowing party, we all decided this would be a great day to get together and recreate a little. At three, we are getting together at the neighbor's across the street to eat and have a fire and play cards and talk. It is so amazing to me how thirty-three years ago, my family and I were doing the same thing with our neighbors after the blizzard of '78. In fact all I remember of that event is from stories I heard from my parents and the neighbors in the ensuing years of how all the neighbors in the cul de sac shoveled paths connecting the houses through the lawns. It was a progressive party, ending, like it usually did at our house for drinks.

There is one picture of a not yet three-year-old me in one of those shoveled paths, only visible due to the tousle cap I was wearing taken, I assume to add a sense of scale to the whole event. It has that 19070's orange-y patina that makes it look so much more vintage than it actually is. Or maybe it is exactly that vintage and I don't want to believe it is so.

The little neighbor girl across the street of about the same age as I was at that time is essentially experiencing the same thing now as I did then. And this time, I will be able to know what it is like from the adult side. I suspect I appreciate a snow day now as a grown up even more than I did as a young kid. After all, what is really tough about being a young kid, relative to being an adult?

A kid sees such great potential for fun on a day like this. Sledding, building snow men, snow forts and having snowball fights. Adults see their car in a ditch, a two-hour commute that should be twenty minutes and at the end of the day your rotten kid beaming you with a snow ball when you finally get home before you even get a chance to get out of your newly customized car.

So as an adult, getting a special unplanned for day off is among the rarest of pleasures. I am sorry to think of the number of people who would otherwise have some forced convalescence today are instead working from home. What a great capability that turned out to be! Em works from home every day. No snow day for her. I also maintain a home office, so while I am not out in the world dealing with the snow, I still have plenty of work to do. Yay!

But, at least there are very few expectations from us as a result of the snow. And that is the next best thing. I mean, I haven't been working too hard and I should be able to pack it in pretty early so in the end, it's as close to a snow day as I will ever see.

Groundhog Day

This is one of the dumbest things ever, but it persists. To me, February 2nd is much more significant due to the number of great people who have birthdays on this date. My late Grandmother would be 107 today if she were alive. I have three other friends who were born on this date as well. Heather is one of these.

I met Heather deep in the summer of 1995 at a party on the eve of the gay pride march on Lansing. We were in Mt. Pleasant, just an hour up the road from the capital and we were whooping it up. Big time.

Heather was then as now thin and tall. She was wearing some spandex thing that only she could pull off on account of the fact there is not an ounce of fat on her. It really was more like a rubber band than a piece of clothing. It was, um, striking. My friend at the time who I brought to the party was indeed stricken. He immediately set about maneuvers to get to know her better.

I on the other hand was holding court on the back deck, where a guy I knew was trying to be the center of attention as was his way. As you can imagine it was my way, too. We were playing the "who can hate on who more" game, trading barbs and witticisms back and forth. It was great, not only because it is one of my favorite things to do, but because I was winning soundly and impressing this large group of people who were mostly relative strangers.

The next day, we set off for Lansing in caravan. All was well until we got to the notoriously crooked police state of St. John whereupon we were immediately beset by multiple police units. My friend was behind me and a cop lit him up, the cop meant to pull us both over. I pulled over, he kept going. Seems he already had some trouble with the law and his right to drive a car legally at that moment was dubious at best.

After we got harassed and let go, (which I had gone through so many times in St. John it was like a right of passage), we all somehow managed to find each other and re-gathered in a parking lot. Somewhere, someone has a tape of my speech to the collected misfits of that gay caravan. It was up to then and maybe even up to now my finest moment. I wish I remember what I said, but whatever it was was hilarious, well aimed and hit the spot.

We continued undaunted. Later that night upon my return, or maybe it was the next day came the call from my parents who had seen me marching in the parade on the news. They wanted to know if there was something I would like to tell them.

Sure. I love gay people. Anything else?

I recall this story, because my life has been significantly more funny and way more colorful since the day I met Heather. She is a great friend, a great adversary ("so, do you want a hug, or....?"), and one of the finest people I know. Heather has been a co-writer, a creative co-conspirator and often videographer to some of the proudest and not so proudest moments of my life.

Happy Birthday, friend! I am so glad that after all these years and all the water under the bridge we are still friends. I am also so glad that you have traded the spandex for flannel... after a while that look just gets desperate.