I’d battle Everest for Captain Crunch

“Because it’s there” always seemed to me a stupid reason to climb a mountain. A burning house may “be there” too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to walk into one. If I see a large pile of collie droppings at the park, I don’t feel compelled to step in them simply because of their proximity and physical reality.

Some things are meant to be avoided. Like mountains.

Yet sometimes, life forces us to step in that poo, walk into that burning building. Climb that mountain.

Such was the case for me yesterday.

As I mentioned last week, I broke my leg recently while trying to remove fallen branches from the roof. They were numerous, since my little house is surrounded by large, evergreen-type trees, each more malicious than that apple tree that waylaid Dorothy during her trek to Oz.

The doctor at the emergency room ordered me to keep the leg elevated for a week or two. At first blush, this sounds like advice I would be happy to hear. I mean, feet up, TV remote and a couple good books close at hand, maybe a bottle of wine to augment the pain meds … I could spend a week like that.

The reality turned out to be somewhat less festive.

Living alone, as I do, means just that: I’m alone. It didn’t take me long to realize that every trip to the kitchen for a glass of water, every meal prepared or dish washed equates to about 20 minutes of pain from a leg that’s supposed to be resting quietly on a pillow.

It got old fast. But the worst of it (so far) was that after a few days, I ran out of food. I was down to nuking the last few permafrost-encrusted bowls of leftover chicken soup I’d squirreled away in the freezer last March.

My mind kept straying to the car, buried somewhere beneath a foot of ice and snow at the at the top of the driveway. The snow in the driveway – the long, curvy, incredibly-unsafe-for-human-use driveway – also was about a foot deep.

But at the bottom lay the open road that leads to the grocery store, where they sell chicken pot pies and sausages and Captain Crunch and potatoes and beer; all the things I had run out of days earlier.

Eventually, the allure of food free of freezer burn won out.

The prep work I put into my expedition would have impressed Sir Edmund Hillary. I covered my cast with plastic to keep the water and snow out; I attached metal ice-gripper things to the bottom of my left shoe; I bundled as if the top of Everest really were my destination.

It took me 10 minutes to hobble down the steps to the “staging area” at the top of my ludicrous rollercoaster of a driveway, another 15 to clear away the ice and snow that had accumulated on the car. By this time my broken leg was singing “Ave Maria” in a very high key.

It took some rocking back and forth, but I got the car rolling. Due to the steep incline, the car eventually lurched forward.

Home free. So I thought, until I came around the last bend and saw what the snowplow guys had left me. Now, no one appreciates clear roads more than I do, and I know all that snow has got to go somewhere. I’m just not sure why that “somewhere” has to be the foot of my long and already-perilous driveway.

But there it was. A wall that would repel more illegal immigrants than anything Trump might have in mind.

It was too late. I couldn’t go back. Using my left foot to work the pedals, I attempted to perform a maneuver I once saw on “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

This story might have ended with me dead in the front seat, frozen or starved to death. Instead, my wonderful neighbors who live in the corner house arrived with shovels and, more importantly, youth, to help dig me out.

I assisted as I could, which basically entailed slipping on the ice and landing on the leg I had broken only days earlier. Also, I had to WALK back up the looooong drive to fetch a bag of driveway salt. And then down again.

By the time the car was returned to solid pavement, my leg had abandoned “Ave Maria” and had moved on to “Bohemian Rhapsody” in a key even higher than the one Freddy Mercury sang it in.

Home from the grocery, I parked out back, at the bottom of the snow-covered, trackless hill. I managed to make it from the car to the house without the help of a Sherpa, rope or regularly-spaced pitons, but it took a while.

So if you’re walking around the lake this summer and happen to see an old guy sitting at the top of a very tall hill sipping a margarita and enjoying the sun on his face, just know this: I earned it, baby.

I earned it.

My new crackpot religion will bring an end to winter

I’m an atheist. There. I said it and I’m glad. 

Oh, I’m not your garden variety atheist. My atheism is very specific: I don’t believe in snow. I’m a Snow Atheist.

The principals of Snow Atheism are simple, as are its rites and practices, at least for the time being. Eventually, I hope to add a few colorful ceremonies like sacrificing virgins, cutting the heads off chickens by the light of a full moon, wearing hats made from tinfoil — that sort of thing. But for now, it’s all about NOT believing in snow.

I know that sounds a little crazy, but so did a lot of religions when they were still theologically wet behind the ears. 

The cornerstone of Snow Atheism is simple enough and one deeply rooted in western theological ideology: if you believe something strongly enough, eventually, it happens. Religious texts are filled with examples of this.

I keep referring to Snow Atheism as a religion, but it’s not, not really. I mean, let’s be real, it does contain the word “atheism,” right? In actuality, it’s more of a belief system, a philosophy (one I’m inventing as I go along, so don’t expect too much). 

It doesn’t infringe on other religions (at least not until I start adding the human sacrifices and tinfoil hats, at which point I’m sure clergy from more conventional churches will begin to take a dim view of it all).

But for now, it’s perfectly cool to be a Catholic Snow Atheist (like me) or a Jewish SA, or Protestant SA or whatever. All it takes is a willingness to not believe in snow.

I’ve been a Snow Atheist for years. I’ll admit that, so far, my beliefs — fervent as they are — have had very little affect on Michigan’s winter weather. 

That’s why I’m so anxious to expand my church membership; I’ve come to realize I can’t do this myself. As they say, there’s strength in numbers.

The problem is, too many of you folks still believe in snow. I blame this on TV meteorologists, who just loooooove to talk about it. When Snow Atheism finally becomes an established religion (with tax exempt status, I’m hoping), TV meteorologists will be among the first human sacrifices (yes, even Craig James, who seems like a nice enough fella).

Though I would dearly love to charge dues for church membership, I’m so desperate for congregants that I won’t, at least not at first.

So I urge you, join the Snow Atheists today! All you need do is step outside, shake your fist at the pendulous, gray canopy of clouds, and shout, “I don’t believe in you, snow! I DON’T! So there!”

I figure if we all do this, the universe will be powerless to do other than raise the temperature by 40 degrees, bring on the sun, and melt away whatever the heck that white stuff is clogging up my driveway.

I don’t know what it is. I just know what it’s not! 

It’s not snow.

Believe, brothers and sisters! Believe!

Norse gods and meteorologists don’t scare me

Well, somehow I managed to survive this winter’s first “Snowpacalypse.” (The first of many, if TV meteorologists have anything to say about it.)

Despite what the talking heads on the morning news were yammering on about, I didn’t freeze to death beneath the permafrost, timber wolves did not appear in the yard to devour my cats, and Snærr, the Norse god of lousy weather, didn’t pop in for a second coming and plunge the world into 100 years of icy darkness.

I did what Michiganders have been doing since we stole the state from its original owners: I dug out the driveway and got on with my life.

The tires on the Toyota were not what they were a few years ago, though, and I did manage to drive off the road at one point. Judging by the length of time it took the tow truck to arrive, I wasn’t the only one.

I now have the new tires I’ve been meaning to get since July, so bring it on, Snærr, I’m ready.

That said, I will admit I’m learning there are two winters every year — city winter and country winter. 

Having grown up in big cities, I’m familiar with city winter. The soot-smuged snow, slush-filled potholes, frequent low speed fender-benders. It’s all well-travelled territory.

What I’m not used to is country winter.

I moved to Lori’s little house on the prairie back in June, so this is my first winter here. We live on land that only a decade ago was somebody’s corn field. Then developers came, excavated a rutted path they laughingly called a “road,” and built a handful of ranch style homes along either side.

The middle of nowhere looks like Manhattan by comparison. This past summer, I felt like a character in a Zane Grey western, a feeling reinforced by the horses living next door. And the tumbleweeds. 

Yes, there are tumbleweeds out here! I have no idea where they come from, but if I leave the garage door open they fill the place in a matter of hours. Crazy.

At any rate, based on what I’ve seen of winter so far, it’s going to be tough to survive out here on the rim of the state’s rugged hinterland. Just this first dusting has piled drifts up to the windows on the northwest side of the house. The tractor, which I was planning to store in the shed, will now instead spend the winter beneath a tarp out back. The shed is snowed shut and it’s just getting deeper. 

Worst of all, the satellite TV and internet — our tenuous link with civilization — has all but shut down. It didn’t work all that well even during the halcyon days of summer, but with the coming of the snow … let’s just say the Amish have better technology.

Still, I am descended from hardy pioneer stock. I’ll survive my first country winter somehow; no matter what Norse gods and TV weather people send my way.

Catch Mike Taylor’s Reality Check radio program every weekday at 5:30 p.m. on WGLM, m106.3 on your FM dial.

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 548-8273

Poison apples may be my best shot at the Best Writer award

I’m not the best writer in the state. I’m not even second best. 

I’m third.

Considering how many writers live and work in Michigan, third place doesn’t seem too bad, right? That’s what I keep telling myself.

But somehow, at the Associated Press awards banquet I attended with co-worker Cory Smith earlier this week, that third place felt like the “Almost Winner” prize on the old Bozo television show; you know, that prize they gave to the spazzy kids who couldn’t get the ping-pong ball to land in a bucket from 14-inches away. Not exactly a mark of distinction.

My Reality Check column (the one you’re reading now) got a Big Number One, all the proof I needed that the AP judges are brilliant discerners of talent and excellent arbiters of all things literary. So why didn’t I win the Best Writer award, the one I was lusting after like a teenage boy lusts after the head cheerleader?

Well, apparently, there are two writers who are better than me. This is difficult for an egomaniacal narcissist such as myself to accept. Suddenly, I understood exactly how the Wicked Queen felt when her magic mirror informed her that Snow White was not only fairer, but also younger and more likely to land a handsome prince.

If I knew how to make poisoned apples, I would send a couple to the two writers who placed ahead of me, thereby increasing my chances of taking the top spot next year. But I don’t have that recipe.

Oh, sure, I could try to write better this year than I did last, but that seems like a lot of work and anyone who knows me at all can tell you “a lot of” is exactly the type of work I avoid whenever possible. Besides, what if I did work really hard, wrote my little heart out, and then STILL lost to those other two writers? 

I’d be tempted to try that apple myself. So that’s out.

To compound the anguish I felt over my Almost Winner status, my co-worker took home an unheard-of FIVE out of six first place awards for things like Best Multi-Media Journalist, Best Feature Photo, Best Video, and Most Inflated Head of Any Journalist in the Room.

Cory’s a hard guy to hate, but I did my best anyway, as I sat there clutching my third place certificate in my sweaty little hands, all the while worrying that his stack of engraved plaques might tip over and crush me beneath their ponderous weight. 

Yeah, yeah, I did get a first place for my column and any rational, normal person would be thrilled with that. Maybe if I hadn’t been sitting next to Cory — who basically pulled off a coup unseen since “Lord of the Rings” swept the Academy Awards — I might have felt better about things.

He’s my bud, though, so — as I did with the two writers who edged me out — I feel I should congratulate him. 

Here, Cory, have an apple.

There’s still magic in those drifts

I wish I could feel about winter as I did when I was a boy. The thrill of those first, tenuous flakes drifting just beyond the fingerprint-smeared windows of St. Isidore Elementary School, the knowledge that soon it would be time to dig out the ice skates, time to sand the rust from the Flexible Flyer’s steel runners, time for hot cocoa with marshmallows, snowball fights, crackling puddle ice, Christmas.

Everything about winter seemed good to me then.

But the thing that seemed best, that filled me to bursting with expectancy, was the snow, that magical element comprised of simple rain, somehow transmogrified into a complex building material suitable not just for snowballs, but igloos, forts, snowmen, angels, toboggan runs and anything else our fertile imaginations could devise.

Our imaginations could devise a lot. This was before PlayStation and Wii had begun the leeching theft, from generations of children, of their childhoods. In those dark ages, we created our own fun. Snow was our currency and by mid-winter we were filthy rich with it. We were, each of us, snow tycoons, and there was nothing we could not accomplish, no manifest destiny we could not fulfill, given a shovel, a bucket and a back yard filled with frozen precipitation.

The years passed and in time, snow’s magic faded. By my teen years, it was something to drive through, to shovel, to methodically scrape from permafrosted sidewalks.

From time to time, the magic would resurface briefly, as it did in the winter of ’78, which everyone’s been talking about lately since that was the last time we saw a winter like this.

I woke one late January morning to find the entire world, or our part of it at least, completely submerged beneath a white, sparkling ocean of snow. Nothing moved, not busses, not mail, not ambulances. Snowmobilers were recruited by hospitals to handle emergency transportation.

I was married to a beautiful, kind young woman who would later become the mother of our children. She stood about 5-feet-nothin’ — in places the drifts outside our apartment towered over her like New York skyscrapers.

But since we had little food in the house and roads clear enough to drive on were still days away, we decided to walk the mile to the neighborhood grocery. Feeling like Grizzly Adams and Paul Bunyan rolled into one, I beat a path through the chest-high drifts with Linda following in my wake.

We laughed and talked as we struggled through that crazy white wasteland. It was one of the most romantic days of my life, though perhaps it doesn’t sound like it now.

That may have been the last time snow’s unique magic cast its spell on my aging soul. If it has happened since then, I no longer remember.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my kitchen, not the office; the cold I had somehow eluded all winter has found me at last and with a vengeance. Beyond the window, snow is falling on back yard drifts that haven’t felt the trod of a human foot all winter and likely never will.

Even were I feeling well, I’d only be counting the days until spring, waiting for a season that better suits my current age and temperament. But gazing out there, at those sugary drifts made up trillions upon trillions of individual flakes — no two alike, if rumor is true — I can’t help feeling there’s some magic left in this old world still, though perhaps I’m too old to see it.

I just hope that somewhere, right this moment, a nine-year-old hand, cold and soggy within a wet woolen mitten, is creating worlds within worlds, all of them white, clean, and glistening with magic.

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com or go to mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

My plan for fixing the universe through ‘snow atheism’

There is a school of philosophical thought that contends things exist only because we think they exist. The universe, socks, Silly Putty, reruns of “Murder, She Wrote”—they’re all merely constructs created by the human mind to give meaning and form to existence. Or so say proponents of this philosophy.

Some go so far as to say everything that is, is merely the invention of a single mind. You, me, the guy who delivers pizza—we’re nothing but players in someone’s extended daydream.

Could be. All I know is, I don’t feel like someone else’s daydream. To quote Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). I looked the Latin translation up on Wikipedia, by the way, so I’d look smarter than I really am.

Not that I should care whether I look smart, since: a) I think; b) I must therefore be; and c) it stands to reason that I must be the one having the daydream that created and sustains the universe.

At this point, I’d like to note I’m not the one who came up with this line of thinking—unless of course it’s accurate, in which case I came up with everything, including Descartes and Latin. So why did I have to check Wikipedia for the translation? I wish I could tell you, but thinking about it beyond this point makes my head hurt.

At any rate, I’ve decided to roll with this philosophy. Why? Because of snow.

I walked the dog late last night and got snowed upon, mightily. By the time I arrived home from the park, I looked like the “Bumble,” from the Rudolph Christmas special.

I’m no fan of snow, but for most of my life I’ve put up with it. Well, those days are over. If my new philosophy is accurate, all I have to do is “imagine” it away. If I think it’s gone, it will be.

Snow? Never heard of it. I’m a snow atheist.

I think this might actually work. After all, this will not be the first time I’ve tried to change the universe through sheer force of will.

I did it once in 1970, while in Mr. Paepke’s algebra for dummies class at Riverside Junior High. At some point in the second semester, I decided to become a math atheist. I simply decided math did not exist. This explained my poor test scores, lack of interest, and notes home to my folks.

My old man, who did not share my philosophical bent, was unimpressed with my efforts to reshape existence and insisted I get a passing grade or risk “serious consequences.” I tried to will him into an alternate reality, but I was young then, and my powers had yet to reach their full potential.

Mr. Paepke eventually passed me with a D and that was the last I saw of math. I had finally imagined it out of existence. These days, I balance my checkbook using a system of guesswork, a rattle and chickens sacrificed by the light of a full moon. It works most of the time.

But back to the snow. At the moment, there’s about an inch of it on the ground outside my office window. I’m about to stop believing in it, so prepare yourself for its sudden and unexplained disappearance.

Here we go … five, four, three, two, one … think!

Lemme check.

OK, this could take a little longer than I thought. But I’ll keep on it. I’m sure by April, May at the latest; the last of that snow will be gone!


More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.