Three generations of female solipsism on a snowy Sunday afternoon.
We had a surprise snowstorm Sunday afternoon. It came down for a couple of hours, maybe 2 or 3 inches accumulation. It was the wet, slushy kind of snow that makes the roads dicey. Plus, the town I live in is basically built on the side of a valley, and it doesn't snow here very often. So, snow, steep hills and drivers not used to the conditions always makes for some entertaining escapades. Yesterday I had a front row seat to a minor (no injuries or even dented cars) sideshow in the three-ring circus. And then the community Facebook group filled in some details.
There's one particular hill that isn't as steep as most of the others. It's the official snow route. But, by around 4:30, two-wheel drive cars were starting to have trouble getting up it. When I got there, about a half dozen cars were spinning their tires unable to make the climb. Princess was driving one of them. She's a 20-something Millennial, and she freaked out when she couldn't get up the hill and called Mom for help. Mom and Grandma mounted a rescue mission (Grandma driving) in Grandma's little AWD crossover.
At this point, the uphill lane is blocked by the cars that can't get up the hill, but downhill traffic is still coming down - people doing the right thing and going one at a time down the hill, letting the car in from clear the hill before starting down. Until Grandma gets there.
She drives down the hill, no traction problems at all, very much in control, and at the bottom, when she's across from where Princess is stuck, she... stops. In the middle of the lane. Puts in in park, and turns on her hazard blinkers.
Mom hops out of the passenger door, runs across the road, and starts coaching Princess on how to pull her car off the road. Grandma remains parked in the other lane, completely blocking downhill traffic. Mom has Princess jockey her car around for several minutes, Grandma blissfully holding everyone else up. Finally, this guy gets out of the truck up at the top of the hill (he almost slid into the ditch stopping when he saw Grandma had parked at the bottom of the hill instead of going on around the corner) and starts walking down.
You could see from his body language he was not pleased. As he got closer, you could also see he was big - NFL lineman big. Middle aged with a buzz cut. He barked something at Mom, gestured at Grandma's car then turned around and headed back up to his truck. Mom ran over to Grandma's window and said something to her. Grandma made some impatient gestures, but finally pulled around the corner to park about 50 yards away on a side street while Mom went back to finish sorting out Princess. The rest of us were finally able to get on our way.
Three generations of adult women, and not a one of them could figure out they were in everyone else's way. Later on Facebook, Princess was complaining that people were unhappy with her family's rescue efforts, saying "people could've helped instead of being mean."
Helped. She wasn't in a ditch on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway where she needed to think about building a shelter and fending off wolves and polar bears for the night. She was on a road in a town with suburban homes all around her. In fact, judging by how fast the family rescue patrol got to her, she probably lived in one of them, and probably wasn't more than a 10 minute walk from her front door. Plus, there were a half dozen other cars in the same situation as she was, so she wasn't alone or in peril. It wasn't any sort of emergency.
But panic aside - the utter cluelessness of these three adult women that they were blocking all the traffic - on the city's designated snow route during a snow storm - for several minutes for no reason is mind-boggling. There was a perfectly nice place to park just around the corner, but to these females, nothing mattered but their little overblown drama.
This, my friends, is female solipsism, demonstrated by a twenty-something, a forty-something, and a sixty-something, all at the same time.
We had a surprise snowstorm Sunday afternoon. It came down for a couple of hours, maybe 2 or 3 inches accumulation. It was the wet, slushy kind of snow that makes the roads dicey. Plus, the town I live in is basically built on the side of a valley, and it doesn't snow here very often. So, snow, steep hills and drivers not used to the conditions always makes for some entertaining escapades. Yesterday I had a front row seat to a minor (no injuries or even dented cars) sideshow in the three-ring circus. And then the community Facebook group filled in some details.
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| Not The Princess From Our Story |
At this point, the uphill lane is blocked by the cars that can't get up the hill, but downhill traffic is still coming down - people doing the right thing and going one at a time down the hill, letting the car in from clear the hill before starting down. Until Grandma gets there.
She drives down the hill, no traction problems at all, very much in control, and at the bottom, when she's across from where Princess is stuck, she... stops. In the middle of the lane. Puts in in park, and turns on her hazard blinkers.
Mom hops out of the passenger door, runs across the road, and starts coaching Princess on how to pull her car off the road. Grandma remains parked in the other lane, completely blocking downhill traffic. Mom has Princess jockey her car around for several minutes, Grandma blissfully holding everyone else up. Finally, this guy gets out of the truck up at the top of the hill (he almost slid into the ditch stopping when he saw Grandma had parked at the bottom of the hill instead of going on around the corner) and starts walking down.
You could see from his body language he was not pleased. As he got closer, you could also see he was big - NFL lineman big. Middle aged with a buzz cut. He barked something at Mom, gestured at Grandma's car then turned around and headed back up to his truck. Mom ran over to Grandma's window and said something to her. Grandma made some impatient gestures, but finally pulled around the corner to park about 50 yards away on a side street while Mom went back to finish sorting out Princess. The rest of us were finally able to get on our way.
Three generations of adult women, and not a one of them could figure out they were in everyone else's way. Later on Facebook, Princess was complaining that people were unhappy with her family's rescue efforts, saying "people could've helped instead of being mean."
Helped. She wasn't in a ditch on the side of the Trans-Canada Highway where she needed to think about building a shelter and fending off wolves and polar bears for the night. She was on a road in a town with suburban homes all around her. In fact, judging by how fast the family rescue patrol got to her, she probably lived in one of them, and probably wasn't more than a 10 minute walk from her front door. Plus, there were a half dozen other cars in the same situation as she was, so she wasn't alone or in peril. It wasn't any sort of emergency.
But panic aside - the utter cluelessness of these three adult women that they were blocking all the traffic - on the city's designated snow route during a snow storm - for several minutes for no reason is mind-boggling. There was a perfectly nice place to park just around the corner, but to these females, nothing mattered but their little overblown drama.
This, my friends, is female solipsism, demonstrated by a twenty-something, a forty-something, and a sixty-something, all at the same time.
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