Jack Frost Nipping

I called my mom yesterday and she told me about how she had locked herself out of her house when she went to get the newspaper. My mom is ninety one years old. It was fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, with snow and ice on the ground.

I'm sure my dad thought he was doing the right thing when he bought the home he and my mom retired to. They had no more children in the house, no more relatives to care for. They wanted a place that would be maintenance free and pleasant, so my dad bought a home in one of those places that only sells to old people. Little did he know that he would almost be responsible for my mom freezing to death twenty years later.

So there is my mom in her little house dress, slippers, and a coat, pushing her aluminum walker down the driveway as the kitchen door clicks shut behind her. When she returned with the paper, she couldn't get back in the door. Her nearest neighbor is fifty feet away. That's as good as a mile when pushing a walker with tennis balls through the snow, but somehow she did it. She managed to make it all the way over to her first nearest neighbor. The deaf one, the one who couldn't hear her knocking on the door. When that failed, she started across the street to the other neighbor who was just leaving in his pickup truck. As mom flailed away, waving her arms franticly at him, the nice neighbor waved and smiled as he drove off. For forty five minutes my dear mother wandered around trying to get somebody's attention. The problem is she lives in a development full of only old people. People who can't see very well, who probably thought that was just a snowman in the middle of the street as they drove by. A snowman in slippers pushing a walker around. Luckily the pickup truck neighbor came back home and realized mom wasn't waving to be friendly.

There is a reason I live in a normal neighborhood. A place with kids playing in the street, folks walking their dogs past the house, a place with life. If I were ever to lock myself out of the house I wouldn't have much of a problem finding somebody to help me. I wouldn't ever have to worry about freezing to death while a bunch of old deaf, and blind people whizzed past in their Buicks. But then again, I live in Florida. No way I could freeze here. I'd probably get eaten by some exotic beast instead.