If somebody out there has a worse ice scraper than me, I'd like to meet that person. That way, we could compare ice scraper horror stories, maybe over a cup of coffee on a cold winter night, while our respective vehicles waited outside, acquiring multiple layers of frost that neither of us would be able to defeat. We would probably call a cab.
It was last winter that I said to myself, "Mike, you need to get a new ice scraper." But then summer came, and purchasing a new ice scraper was the farthest thing from my mind. My scraper was left unattended underneath my seat, along with my trusty first-aid kit (one day I fear that I may actually need that kit, and I will open it to discover that there is only a note inside that reads, "Call 911.") It wasn't until recently, on a crisp November morning, that I walked out of the door only to realize that my vehicle was a startling shade of white, like it had seen a ghost, and tried to protect itself by covering its' glass components with frost.
Luckily for me, it takes my defroster approximately 3 hours to activate, at which point it blows out several breaths of lukewarm air, while simultaneously using 14 gallons of gas. "I had better get my ice scraper," I said to myself. So I began the long journey around my vehicle to the other side, but I slipped on some ice in the development parking lot, somehow regained my balance, and arrived at the passenger side door with my arms outstretched, like a surfer arriving at shore. I quickly looked around to see if anyone just saw that, and then I got my ice scraper.
My ice scraper has two features. On one end are bristles, which can either be used to dust snow off of one's vehicle, or to brush the teeth of a wooly mammoth. On the other end is the scraper part. The only problem with the scraper end however, is that it does not scrape. When I glide it across my front windshield, it makes three vertical lines, each exactly .00000000001 millimeters in width. Instead of actually removing the frost from my vehicle, it appears as though I'm doing some kind of calligraphy on my windshield. If any of my neighbors were to watch this, they would undoubtedly say, "Hey honey, get over here. That idiot from upstairs just slipped on the ice, and now he's trying to write his name in cursive on his front windshield again."
Since I obviously can't be late for work, I furiously scrape just a portion of the area of the windshield I need to see in order to drive. But then as I start driving, I realize that if something were to cross my path, like a duck, or maybe a mailman, I would never see it, because I did not have time to scrape the other 97 percent of my windshield, or the windows on the doors. This does not bother me however, as I continue to view the road ahead through the top loop of my steering wheel, crouched over like an old lady, waiting for the freakin' defroster to kick in, and using my windshield wipers to assist in the process.
So while I am fairly confident that I possess the worst ice scraper in the free world, this feeling of pride has not made me the safest driver on the roads of New Jersey during the hour of 6:00am to 7:00am each weekday morning during the months of November through March. I think I may have to either purchase a new ice scraper, or save money and just use a pencil to remove the frost from my vehicle each morning, which would be more effective than my current method. Until then, if you see a big red truck on the road in the morning, that appears is being operated by no one in particular, please get out of my way. My defroster has not kicked in yet.
