Russian Blond in the Snow Storm

My first few months of driving in America went almost uneventfully not counting a few red lights passed and driving on the wrong side of the road.

September of 1996 threw a snowstorm at Kansas City and its vicinities: the sky turned grey and the snow flakes were like small puffy snow balls. I hurried up to pick up my son from school early and hit a traffic jam. Slowly moving forward on Shawnee Mission Parkway, I started having a problem with visibility; the snow was sticking to the windshield like plaster. I started looking for wipers and turned the button that I thought would be wipers, but the wipers didn’t move. What if they are frozen or the snow is too heavy?

The car was moving forward in a herd of other cars, the snowstorm was getting worse, and I couldn’t see anything on the sides either. My only hope was the windshield, but where is that darn button? Pushing and releasing the gas pedal, to keep up with other cars, I tried to locate the button or something like a handle that will resuscitate the wipers, touching everything around the wheel, on the wheel and under the wheel. “Gosh! Why didn’t I ever try to learn what do I have all those buttons for in my car?” From now on all I saw was a snow pile with me buried inside. I bravely opened the window not seeing a thing in front of me and not knowing how far the car in front of me was. I stretched my arm as far as I could, and then tried to angle it to be able to reach the snow on the windshield. Finally, I succeeded, though straining my back in the process. O-o-o-p-s! I need to slow down now before I attempt another cleaning effort. The car in front of me happened to be too close and it was hard to push the pedal and clean the snow at the same time.

The snow fell faster than I was able to sweep the surface of the windshield; I could see nothing again until my next straining stretch.

My 9 year old son got into the car and said, “Mom why did you drive with your windows down? It is too cold! Look your hair is wet.” I admitted humbly, “I would love to close the windows, but only if you show me where the wiper button is.”