Mr. Lucky!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I blame Mother Nature. She’s decided that she doesn’t want anyone living in my part of the country any more, so she’s taken a page from the Slum Lord play book and is trying to run us all out by making the area uninhabitable. Slum Lords generally try underhanded tactics like turning off the heat or electricity so the building is cold and dark. Mother Nature has pummeled us with several thousand tons of snow so the state is cold and dark.

Less hardy souls might be tempted to move, but not me. I’ve decided to stay and fight. If you’d like to simulate my experience of living in a winter wonderland, try this simple experiment.

Go to the store and buy the biggest box of instant mashed potato flakes you can find. Dump the entire box into a tea cup. Clean up the mess using a sugar spoon while somebody periodically pours crushed ice down the back of your shirt. When you’re almost done, send your friend to the store for two or three more big boxes of potato flakes.

Really.

Cynics might think I’m exaggerating. To them I say, “Come see for yourself…and please bring a shovel…and a thermos of hot cocoa…and maybe a snowblower if you have one.”

A snowblower is the best offensive weapon in the war on winter; it combines a noisy gas-powered motor with dangerous moving parts and makes it easy to transport large quantities of snow from one place to another. The rear-wheel drive propels it forward at a stately quarter-inch-per-millenium while the spinning-blades-of-doom scoop snow off the sidewalk and spray it out the chute in a fine power that instantly sticks to the operator’s clothes. Transferring the snow to a new location (such as a foyer, hallway, or garage) simply requires the operator to disrobe in the appropriate place. (Note: An extensive mop-up operation — using a real mop — will be required once the clothing melts.)

In the past week, I’ve spent approximately two-thousand hours trudging along behind a snowblower, with nothing but the ear-rattling buzz of the motor for company. As I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

Mostly I’ve been thinking about the stick-figure guy who is featured so prominently in the safety illustrations posted all over the machine. In one, he’s pictured standing next to a cutaway drawing of the snowblower. For some reason (one presumes comic effect) he is reaching down the snow chute and jamming his arm into the mechanism. His hand has come free and waiving happily while it tumbles among the blades like a lost sock in a dryer. Electric-bolt pain lines radiate from his stump to communicate the idea that a traumatic amputation would be painful and unpleasant. Just to make sure that slow-witted snowblower operators don’t interpret this image as something they should do, the whole thing is overlaid with a big red circle-and-slash; the international symbol for bad idea. In another image, the stick-figure guy is jamming his booted foot into the front of the machine with equally hilarious results.

Despite the best efforts of stick-figure guy, approximately three-thousand Americans wind up seeking emergency medical treatment for snowblower-related injuries every year. Interestingly, although stick-figure guy turns up in all sorts of unsafe situations, he never seems to need actual medical treatment. He never even seems particularly upset at his injuries.

It’s as if he’s saying, “Oh. Darn. Injured again.”

Stick-figure guy is like one of those character actors who always turn up on TV shows and die before the first commercial break to show that the main characters are in real danger. Or maybe a politician who is constantly in hot-water with the electorate, but never gets voted out of office. There’s just no keeping stick-figure guy down.

I think stick-figure guy got his start as a celebrity on the doors of restrooms. He’d appear on the men’s room door while his good friend, stick-figure woman, did the same on the ladies. Her career stalled out and she’s stuck making endless personal appearances on bathroom doors. Meanwhile stick-figure guy has gone on to international super-stardom as a professional risk-taker.

Over the years (and around the world) he’s been crushed, mangled, torn, folded, spindled and mutilated. Signs have featured him getting bitten by snakes, tumbling off cliffs, being flattend under various falling loads, getting hit by cars while crossing the street illegally, losing assorted appendages to a frightening array of power equipment, and being repeatedly attacked by untamed bolts of electric current. What’s most impressive, is that he does his own stunts.

The implied script for these little scenes is always the same. Stick-figure guy shows up and immediately does something foolish and dangerous; sort of like Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplain, but without the rinky-tink piano music.

After all of this time, I think stick-figure guy must be tired of playing the clown and might want to stretch his acting muscles in new directions. Perhaps he could expand into other kinds of warning signs.

For example, instead of just rating movies, maybe the Motion Picture Association of America should give stick-figure guy a few featured roles to warn film-goers about the actual content of the movie. Imagine a picture of stick figure guy with his head drooping forward and a string of comic z’s floating from his mouth to indicate a flick filled to the brim with subtext and tedious character development. (Of course, this could also indicate a Congressional hearing, a University lecture, or virtually any work-related meeting.) Stick-figure guy with a box of tissues and hilariously-large teardrops surrounding his head would warn you against a weeper (or perhaps caution you that it’s allergy season.) For an action film stick-figure guy could be shown … well … losing a limb or being blown up or something … which would bring him right back to the kind of work that built his career.