Last night, I chuckled while watching the news as the roving reporter wove a sad tale of the many ruined holidays ending in the hospital Emergency Room due to slips and falls on ice. Karma being what it is, I myself almost joined those unlucky few in the ER while dragging the trash & recycle bins out to the curb later that night. "I've got to get a shovel and clean this driveway up before someone (especially me) gets hurt!" I exclaimed to myself.I know what you are saying, "There are NO shovels to be had that are good for shoveling snow at this time of the year!!!", and yes, you are right (well sort of). I went up to Lowe's after lunch to find the shelves full of all sorts of shovels good for digging holes, trenches
and everything other than clearing a snow covered/icy driveway. Another gentleman on the phone next to me pleaded with his boss on the other end: "There are only shovels for digging holes with pointy ends, what do you want me to do?!?". He ended up getting a spade shaped Round-Point shovel, and as he departed I wished him good luck while rubbing my chin trying to recall the names of my neighbors that I could borrow a shovel from in a time like this. "I wonder if Todd is at work?" I asked myself. As I looked for something resembling anything that could be kludged into service to clear my small driveway, I sighed and began to berate myself for not buying a shovel earlier in the year. That's when I thought: "I wonder if I could find a shovel in the Gardening section? Even a used shovel would be better than nothing!!!". I exited the warmth of the store to the abandoned cold exterior section normally populated with trees, flowers and what not during the summer, to find a snow covered lot with shelves chocked full of wheel barrels and
other miscellaneous bits. As I scavenged around the lot, it was there amongst the piles of snow that I found it! A Fiberglass Long Handled Square Point shovel jammed into a trash bin full of plastic wrap that had been barely used by an employee to spread sand and salt. I inspected the shovel, and sure enough, the UPC bar-code and other stickers were still in new condition! I stabbed the shovel a few times into a pile of snow to clean up the blade, and rushed to the cash register before someone could see what I was up to. Along the way, a few employees and almost every customer that I passed stared at the shovel in my hand in disbelief. As I smirked, I could read their minds like text bubbles floating above their heads, simultaneously reading: "Where did he find that shovel?!?!?". I strode up to the register, presented the bar-code to be scanned, paid the gentleman and was out the door in a flash before anyone could stop me with my ill gotten gains. Another good thing is that since it was originally procured for in-house use, this shovel was one of the cheapest ones that Lowe's carried too ($10.98 cheap)! I was giddy with glee as I snapped the picture of the shovel in the parking lot. ^__^
A few hours of huffing and puffing & a healthy application of elbow grease, plus a good dose of literal hammer banging on ice left me with a semi-clean driveway the wife will be proud of! The moral of the story is: Just because they say something is out of stock, doesn't always mean you can't get what you are looking for! If you want to be lazy and a procrastinator, then you had better be able to think outside of the box to survive in this day and age.
