Snow | Apartment 221

Snow is better than rain. It's like happy rain. Rain seems so angry while it dives and throws itself at the ground in a hurry like business people at the airport wearing their Armani ties and scowls. Snow is like the little children at the airport that are on their way to celebrate thanksgiving. Even though their parents tug them along with their hands that aren't preoccupied with carseats and diaper bags, the kids still toddle all over getting excited about automatically flushing toilets and those automated airport trash cans that compact the trash inside to make room for other trash. Snow takes its time on its way down from the sky and enjoys the view of the world at different heights.
My mom liked the snow too. On snow days when I was in elementary school she would buy packets of Kool-Aid and shake them out over the ground to write our names in the snow. Then we would race to see who could lick up their name the fastest. My dad's from Florida so he hated the cold. He would yell that we would get frostbite unless we came inside right away. He didn't really understand that you can't get frostbite when it's 34 degrees outside. But my mom and I would humor him and come inside to write limericks about winter. She always said that writing was the best way to remember. She said that a poem is like a fishing net that catches fish-but the fish were memories. I told her that I hated fish because they tasted like sewage and hotdogs were better.
So it's snowing today. There are three feet of snow outside of Dreamwood Terrace.
I watch the snowflakes outside my window serenely mosey their way through the air.
For a second it's like I revert to my childhood. The cupcake shop doesn't open for an hour so my brain shuts off and my body throws on a coat, grabs my keys, and sprints to K. Rogers to buy Kool-Aid powder. I get back to my apartment and the autopilot disengages. I look in the grocery bag clenched in my hand and see a bright red box of black cherry flavored Kool-Aid packets. "What a fucking waste of money" I growl to myself.
After helping Christine close up for the night I remember that I've been needing to run by the Sunny Side Up diner to get my toilet plunger back from Flo who borrowed it on Thursday. Walking down the block with snow flurries getting caught in my eyelashes, I run Auden's words through my mind "And death put down his book." Snow always makes me think of my mother. I get to the counter where this new employee-she looks like she's maybe in college?- is reading Slaughterhouse Five.
You know when you are thinking of something and then you want to say something else to someone but instead of saying what you want to say, you say what you were thinking? Yeah.
I meant to ask where Flo was but instead I quoted, "And death put down his book."
I am one panty-dropping bastard.
Before I embarrass myself further, I give up and walk out the door where the cold greets me with a stifling bear hug. And then that employee scurries out after me explaining that some speed dating thing is beginning and her shift is almost over and would I like to go bowling and did she mention her name was Lucia? It's like she's a film on fast forward. I hate bowling but Christ, her eyes are so blue they are painful to look at and I don't want to hurt her feelings-so I agree.
Damn it. I just wanted to get my plunger back.