Car-pushing Season

Thanks to the excessive snowfall in this frigid Canadian city in the last while, I have spent a large portion of my time in the past few days pushing out stuck cars, including my own.

It started on Saturday night, when I left to go scrapbooking with my high school friends. Some jerk in a big truck parked a foot away from my front bumper on a hill. Who does that? Idiot. With the huge ruts and piles of loose snow in our area (the snow plows have trouble getting up the hill), it would have been bad enough to get out of that spot without the truck moron. (Incidentally, what is it about people who drive a truck/SUV in bad weather that causes them to drive like idiots? Seriously. Slow down a bit and maybe you won't skid out into that light standard. 'Four by' doesn't make you invincible.) At any rate, Paul came out and drove while I pushed (with assistance from a random jogger who stopped to help push then jogged off into the sunset) and I was soon on my way without hitting the truck (which he would have deserved but then I would have had Guilt. I know, I should be Catholic.)

After scrapbooking, Tara, Melissa and I all left at the same time, which was fortunate because they both needed pushing out. Melissa used to work in the bush with me and she's pretty good at getting unstuck. With just me pushing and her rocking the car we were able to get her on her way quite quickly.

Tara, however, is not a good driver. I think it maybe relates to her inability to navigate. Seriously, she can get lost while sitting still. We really should have had one of us drive her car out. Instead of rocking the car she just applied the gas and let the wheels spin and as soon as we got her moving she would crank the wheel to turn and immediately get stuck again. Every time we stopped we would have to keep getting her to straighten out her tires again. (I may sound frustrated but I actually wasn't. This is just the way Tara is. She knows she's not a good driver and takes instruction fairly well; we just didn't instruct her well enough.) It took almost 10 minutes and Jim had to come out and help us push before we could get her free. I stupidly did not wear my mittens to push and my hands were all frozen and disgusting. Luckily I was not stuck and all three of us were soon on our way. (I'm really sore today from pushing though.)

Despite how frustrating it can be to not be able to get around easily I quite like this time of year, which I call "Car-pushing season". I enjoy using my brain and my body together to solve problems (ie stuck car). I enjoy that random strangers will stop what they are doing to push me out, and that I'm able to return the favor (by pushing out other stuck cars, not by pushing over random strangers). It gives me a sense of community, of connectedness to all the other Canadians with stuck cars.

This is one of the common cultural threads that remains unacknowledged and underexamined. Stuck cars bring us closer together, either with the frustration it engenders or the satisfaction of prying a vehicle free from the ravening jaws of winter. It is a triumph over the cold and ultimately over evil. That makes us superheroes! I am Rocking Girl! This is Pushing Guy! There goes Kitty Litter Kid! He's Plow Man and she's Shovel Girl! Together we are The Car Extractors! (and fade to commercial).