ALL IN A DAY’S WORK!
The requisite March snowstorm which signals “Springtime
in the Rockies” came to Colorado the other day.
The snow began with showers in the evening and turned to
heavy wet flakes for several hours overnight.
When morning came, it was with clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine. What a beautiful sight to see everything
covered in pristine white, the branches on the trees draped with sparkling
diamonds, and the bushes dazzling with their own coat of jewels. Though some of the trees had started to bud
just a couple of days before, thankfully there were no leaves on the trees for
the heavy snow to extract the almost certain toll of broken branches like has
happened during so many other spring snowstorms.
No, this storm had only produced a winter wonderland of
eye candy.
However, a while later when I had to go out and take care
of some errands, the sunlight reflecting off that white landscape was about a
thousand times brighter than usual.
Pretty soon I couldn’t see anything at all because the glare was so intense.
My sunglasses didn’t seem to help at
all. Going inside after being out in all that light pitched me right into
darkness. It took quite a long time for
my eyes to focus and work properly again.
That little incident reminded me of a similar, but comical, experience years ago.
When our kids were still pretty small before my parents
died, we used to drive up to Wyoming and spend the Thanksgiving holiday with them. One year it had snowed quite heavily while we
were there, so that the whole flat landscape on the way back to Denver was one
giant reflection of sun on snow. It was
hard to see anything specific, just shapes and outlines.
During that little vacation trip, I also realized that my
driver's license was going to expire on my birthday which was just a few days after
that. Since that was during the years we
had only one car, and Ross took it to work every single day, I suggested that
we stop at the Driver's License Bureau before we went all the way to our house
in Arvada. That way the renewal would be
taken care of, and I wouldn’t have to “borrow” the car and drive with an
expired license.
However, when I walked into the Driver's License Bureau, I
was plunged into complete darkness—that same phenomenon after having stared for several hours into
intensely bright sunlight reflected over miles and miles of snow-covered countryside.
I struggled to see the chart during the eye test,
blinking several times and pausing along the way to see if I could focus my
eyes better to see clearly enough so I could correctly answer the questions asked
by the examiner. It took quite a bit
longer than usual, but I finally completed the test and awaited the results.
“Well," the examiner drawled, “I’ll pass you on the eye
test. You can see all right, but your
hearing is borderline. You may want to get that checked out. Here's your new license.”
I nearly laughed out loud! He had mistaken my blinded eyes for
malfunctioning ears. Oh, well. I’m sure he had encountered all kinds of
scenarios over the years as he completed his duties at the Driver's License
Bureau. For him it was
…all in a day’s work!
