Listen, if you can't scrape your windows, just get a garage. But until then, scrape your fucking windows

Ahh, late autumn/early winter.   A special time in the best city in the world.  Before I was out of High School, I rarely scraped my car windows.  To my defense, it was completely unnecessary for most of the year.  But as the weather got colder and the frost (or ice and snow) formed, visibility dropped all the way down to just in front of my steering wheel.  Sometimes I would just turn the heater on and wait for the windows to clear from that.  As soon as there was about a 2 inch clear spot at the bottom of the windshield, I was good to go.  I’d just hunch over, forehead against the steering wheel, wipers going full blast, peering through the growing clean spot.  By the time I reached my destination, I was sitting back in comfort, wipers off, driving like a pro.

Usually, I didn’t have any sort of ice scraper either.  I do remember that at one time I had an old metal light switch plate that I used to scrape my windows.   Yeah, that left permanent deep gouges in the glass.  Also, I had no gloves. 

If it snowed, I had no brush or anything, so I’d clutch the end of my coat sleeve and wipe off what I considered the minimum for reasonable travel.  The first few times I just cleared a spot about 4 inches by 6 inches in the middle of the driver’s side windshield.  That’s when I learned how important side windows were in driving.  So I wisely started clearing a similar sized patch on either side window.  That’s when I learned about how that works not at all on the passenger side.  Of course, to see out of these arrow slits, it was necessary to press my face close to the window, thus fogging it up and rendering the window once again useless.  I actually (erroneously) thought since I knew the route pretty well, visibility was nice, not absolutely essential.   Each day of these scary morning commutes, I’d promise to get myself some gloves and an Ice scraper.  No way I was getting one of those stupid brushes. 

If it was just frost, I’d try to use the window cleaner to melt it off.  Well this works really well if 1) You have excellent wiper blades, and 2) Your car is already warm.  Admittedly, the crystallizing blue wiper fluid as it freezes is a thing of beauty, but unfortunately, it eventually makes matters worse.

I think I was about 30 years old when I was finally completely prepared for any snow and ice windshield maintenance.  I always have gloves in the car.  I always have a scraper.  I always have a brush.  If the world is still here in 2013 (fat chance), it will surely be a very different one.  One that could not even be predicted by the Mayans.  That means, I wouldn’t be surprised at all (or unprepared) if some freezing rain began to fall on the 4^th of July.   I’d be ready.  My scraper is always in my car.

Here’s the sweet irony.  The time of my preparedness for inclement windshield weather coincides almost exactly with the time my car was usually garaged overnight. 

One of my favorite commutes is the one where my completely shiny, clean dry car plows through the overnight snow as I wave to others in clearly garaged cars, knowing they can see me like it’s a fine summer day (pre 2013, of course).  I have respect for the person whose car was obviously out in the elements, but who took the time to not only clear off every inch of window (including mirrors), but wipe the snow off the top of the car.  I don’t envy you, but I respect you. 

The people I absolutely cannot stand are the ones who do exactly what I used to do.  When I see these cars, covered in frost or snow, with a shivering, hunched over driver, cigarette trembling from purple lips, I think out loud, “what a complete and total fucking moron.”  I then unbutton the top button of my shirt because, whew, it’s a little warm in my nice big clean new dry sedan.  Must be the complete absence of holes in the floorboard.  

So this morning as I settled in for a nice comfy cozy warm drive in, I was momentarily blocked by a very smart young girl.  Actually, I don’t have any idea how smart she is. I just know she’s smarter than I was at that age.  She had backed out of her driveway and into the street.  Much like all of her car windows, she just sat there frozen.  There was just enough room for me to get by between the front of her car and her driveway.  I could see that her windows were all frosty, but I didn’t understand why she was just sitting there.  Is she picking up a friend, I wondered.  Then it hit me.  Her not being able to see is stopping her from continuing.  That’s how I know she is smarter than I was.  “What a complete and total fucking moron,” I said as I drove in front of her, offering up a completely unseen friendly wave.

Yeah – getting old is a bitch.