(FREEZING) MAD

JANUARY 11, 2020 – It started with a paper cut.  Yesterday at my office, I picked up the phone and sliced my fingertip on a sheet of paper in an untidy stack next to the phone. The tiny cut drew blood. Later, every time I pulled my mitten on or off, my finger cried, “Ouch!”

Heavy mittens are what I had to wear skiing yesterday evening because of a serious wind chill.  Yes, “evening.”  I’d left my office early and reached home in time to suit up and walk to “Little Switzerland” . . . had all gone by plan . . . before darkness fell over the skating rink that sprawls between our house and Como Park.

Fly in ointment: misplaced housekey. But I knew where I’d put it upon arriving home from the office!

The situation drove me crazier. As I retraced my steps, raced up and down stairs, and searched three-times-every-pocket, I grew less concerned about the key and more about my mind off its leash. In wholesale disgust at my AWOL consciousness, I gave up and stomped off without the key. (By that time, my wife had arrived home and could allow me back in when I returned from skiing.)

By then, however, darkness had descended in full. The alley was nearly impassable. With skis in one hand, poles in the other, ski boots in my backpack, I imitated the gait of a primitive ancestor. Having cracked a rib in an icy fall last winter, I prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.  No sooner had this thought entered my brain when Inner Voice shouted, “That’s a helluvan attitude for someone who used to love winter!”

I got mad at myself for thinking like an old person. “If you’re mad, you’re old,” said Inner Voice. I steamed.

Just then, one of my shoes came untied. Damn! I didn’t want to remove my mittens—papercut!—and waste precious exposure time retying the shoelace.  I’d have to remove my mittens to switch from shoes to ski boots once I reached “Little Switzerland,” and my hands needed to conserve as much warmth as possible. Mad at the paper cut, mad at the missing key, my mind having gone AWOL, mad at the icy conditions, mad at being mad, I just kept walking like a Neanderthal, shoelace streaming behind me. “Good that it’s dark,” I muttered to Inner Self. “No one can see me in my sorry state of mind.”

“Hurrrumph!” Inner Self said sarcastically.

The skiing was so cold I cut it short after only four big hills. Hands were numb; face, frozen. After switching from boots back to shoes, I didn’t bother tying the shoes. I reenacted Mr. Neanderthal back to the house.

For dinner I picked up takeout from nearby Dino’s Gyros. Once settled in, with unaccustomed relish I ate French fries and a Philly gyros while my wife and I watched TV. This left Inner Voice speechless and Inner Self shocked and awed.

Serves ’em right.

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© 2020 Eric Nilsson