Two Hours Late

The good thing is that I have time that I need to use or I’ll lose it. I used it to help a neighbor or two.

In the shower, I could feel which muscles were going to give me problems. I manhandle my snow thrower, instead of using the reverse gear I just drag it backwards.

I finished my normal get-ready-for-work routine and started my normal get-to-work routine. I passed one of my seventy year old neighbors, she was shoveling out her tenant’s car. She’s one of the neighbors I try to get to but she’s six houses away from me.

She was shoveling out her tenant’s car because his daughter might be taken to the hospital at any moment. My mind flashed with ideas. I wanted to help her. I was going to be two hours late as it was, I’m never really late anymore and I’ve never missed a day in fifteen years. Work is weird, they want you there just in case. I know that I will be doing nothing important, just like all of the snow emergencies of the past.

I tell myself that I have to go in, even if it’s stupid. I tell myself, “You can’t save the world,” which is a weak argument, that I don’t agree with, not that I think I can save the whole entire world, but I can make my neighbor’s world easier to get through.

My heart sank as I apologized that I couldn’t get to her. She told me that she knew that I always try. I told her that if I could get out of work that I would be back.

The neighbors that I did do: one is able bodied and the other has family that can help, I wished that my efforts will get paid forward to the seventy year old down the street.

Such is life.

In work, people come and see me, I get them laughing with my funny stories, an angry boss puts an end to it by calling the folks away from my cube. I think about my neighbor.

The folks in my house have nothing to do and in most of the years of us living there, they have had no need to lift a shovel.

I called the house. I said, ‘If you get bored…” and told them of our neighbor’s plight. They won’t get bored, but they will feel guilt if their charity doesn’t kick in first.

...

I told someone, that often I joke about having irresistible powers, but in truth I know that I do have some sort of powers, and I assured her that I try to only use my powers for good. She said, “No, not powers: sorcery.”

I smiled because maybe it is something a little more devious than just powers.

...

I always had a problem with the notion of verbal spells, I had a hard time believing that the mere speaking of certain words in a certain order could conjure up something but lately I’ve been thinking about all the things that were just thoughts in my head but came about soon after I spoke them.

I still don’t think that they could summon a dragon from the nether world but maybe small personal verbal spells work.

...

I got a call later.

“Is it the old Irish lady?”

“No. The old Irish lady is the one that had some guy with a machine doing it. It’s the one on our side about six doors up, past the condos they are trying to sell at 174, I think.”

“Okay. I think I know.”

And that is why the Timmy of Legend is sometime hated, he's a bit of a bastard but you have to love his style.