Tag Archives: sidewalk

Hey Bill, I can shovel your sidewalk if you want

Dear Bill Simmons:

We just had a pretty big snowstorm here in New York. The night before it started coming down, the news was telling us to expect at least ten inches. And no, I didn’t get out and measure it or anything like that, but it looks like ten inches, I think. It’s a lot of snow, is what I’m getting at here. It’s a powdery type of snow though, not too dense, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to clean up.

Still, snow is snow, and I had to shovel. I actually got a ticket for not shoveling in front of my house the last time it snowed. Yeah, yeah, I know, I have like a million excuses, like I was working both the night of the last snowstorm and the night after. So it was like, I came home from work, I should have just shoveled right away, but I put it off for the next day. And of course I overslept, I was rushing to get ready for the following night at the restaurant. I told myself, tomorrow, definitely tomorrow. But the Department of Sanitation must have been thinking the same thing, tomorrow, we’re definitely giving that guy a ticket tomorrow.

This time around, I made sure, as soon as that last snowflake fell, I was outside with my shovel. As I was shoveling I thought, Bill, wouldn’t it be cool if we were next-door neighbors? I know you’re a busy guy, and so I’d totally get your walk if you were at work or something. I don’t know exactly where your job takes you these days, I mean, I don’t really know where you do your filming for ESPN. You write a lot about how you’re from Boston, but you don’t live there anymore do you?

Maybe if you moved to Queens, right next-door to me, it would be like a rude awakening, it would snow, you’d have to shovel. How long has it been since you’ve had to shovel a walk? Don’t worry about it too much though, I told you, I’d help out. And maybe you’d be walking home just as I was finishing up the path right to your front door. Would we have met yet? Like, maybe you’d have waved to me every now and then on your way out the door. But a conversation?

“Hey man, thanks a lot, I really appreciate the help. I’m Bill, by the way, I know we haven’t gotten a chance for any official introductions, but yeah, thanks again for the shoveling.”

I’d say, “Hey, Bill, no problem, any time man.” And then it would get tricky, because obviously I’d recognize you, you’re a pretty famous guy. But do I want to come across as too eager? Like, “Yeah, I know you, you’re Bill Simmons, you’re the Sports Guy, I read all of your stuff on Grantland, I actually have a blog where I write you a letter every week begging for a job as a full-time writer. Have you seen it? Have you read any of my letters? What do you think Bill, can I have a job?”

It might come off as a little too strong. Still, anything else, like if I pretended not to know who you are, “My name’s Rob. Nice to meet you … Bill? Did you say it was Bill? Or Phil?” and you’d have to reintroduce yourself, “Bill. Bill Simmons.” That’s cool, I mean, it would have the benefit of you thinking that you could let your guard down around me, you’d go to work in the morning, you’d be the Sports Guy, but you’d come home at night and you’d just be regular next-door neighbor Bill, hanging out with his new friend Rob, a nice guy who shoveled his sidewalk, plus the path leading to his door, all out of the goodness of his own heart, not looking for anything in return.

Which of course isn’t really true, which is why I’d hesitate to go down that route. What if we hit it off? What if we became good friends? You’d obviously start to ask me questions like, what do you do for a living Rob? And I’d have to be like, well Bill, since you asked, I’m an aspiring writer. What about you?

And you’d go into your whole, “Really? I’m a writer too. I’d love to look at your stuff.” Which, yeah, that would be great. Please, read my stuff Bill. But then you’d come across these letters, the whole Dear Bill Simmons column, and you’d see that not only did I know who you were all along, but maybe my generous acts of snow shoveling weren’t as selfless as they appeared.

You’d think, is anything that Rob’s said about himself true? I’d try to explain, that yes, I really am a nice guy, and also yes, I desperately want to write for Grantland. “You moving next-door to me, I couldn’t believe the luck, but I didn’t know how to handle the situation. So, I’m sorry Bill, I’m sorry for coming across as disingenuous, but I just really, really want to work for you. And I also really want to be great neighbors. And maybe friends. But we’ll take it slow. What do you say?”

I’m pretty confident that you’d see through to the real me. I’m a nice guy Bill. And although we’ll probably never be next-door neighbors, we could still be coworkers. You could totally be my boss. And while I won’t push the friendship thing, I won’t close the door on it completely. So maybe like after years of working for you, building up a professional relationship, one based on hard work and writing whatever you tell me to write, maybe we can think about being friends. But first things first. Offer me a job Bill. I’ll say yes. Ask me to shovel your walk. I’ll say no. You’ll say, “But I thought you’d do whatever I told you to do.” And I’ll say, “I can’t shovel your walk. Because I already did it.”

I’m for real Bill. Give me a shout. Give me a job. Please.

Love,

Rob G.

Snow shoveling, soon

A couple of weeks ago we got a pretty big snowstorm, big for New York anyway. I’m sure the people of Manitoba or Vladivostok have different definitions of pretty big snowstorms, but this was enough that I had to go down to the basement and find the old snow shovel. So yeah, it was snowing, the snow was accumulating, there was a lull, and I went out to dig. And then a few hours later it picked up again, I had to go out again a few hours later, I sprinkled some salt, and I called it a night.

And then the next day it was this gross, warm rain, everything sort of melted, but not really, the whole city turned into this charcoal gray slush pit. The next day while I was at work, apparently there were a couple more inches of snow still floating around in the clouds, and that eventually made its way to the sidewalk. Then the temperature dropped.

It was so cold that, by the time I made my way home from work at like two in the morning, there was a giant lumpy sheet of ice covering the sidewalk in front of my house. I immediately recognized my civic duty, to at least try to clean this stuff up so that no pedestrians would take a tumble in front of the property, but I was tired, I said to myself, I can do this tomorrow. Besides, I pulled out all of these rationalizations, how I’d already shoveled the day before, twice, how all of that shoveling proved to be a huge waste of time, seeing as how the rain melted everything not even twelve hours later.

I left it. And the next day was even colder, so I left it again. A few of my neighbors had left theirs, I figured, all right, as long as I’m not the only one, whatever, I’ll get to it soon. Which, and at this point in my life, I’m even more than halfway conscious of the fact that whenever I say that I’ll do something soon, it really means that I’ll never do it.

When I got home from work that night, I found that it was just me and this Greek guy next door that were the last two houses on the block that hadn’t even made an attempt to clear out a path. But it was still so cold, I told myself, even if I wanted to shovel right now, I wouldn’t be able to. It was pure ice. I made a plan to do it tomorrow, as soon as the sun was out, maybe there would be a little melting to make everything easier.

And it was significantly warmer the next day. Unfortunately I got up pretty late, late enough that the Department of Sanitation had time to write out tickets for both my neighbor and me. It basically amounted to, you guys didn’t even try to clean up the sidewalk, so pay up, a hundred bucks.

All I could think about was the hundred dollars that my grandfather had just given me for Christmas. Come on, it’s like why does the universe always have to take away just as easily as it dishes out? I had plans for that hundred bucks. Well, not any concrete plans, really. But I did plan on keeping it in my pocket for as long as possible, trying to hold off on spending it until I had no other money left in there, and then I’d break it and I’d use it guilt-free on all sorts of little purchases until there was nothing left.

So I made up my mind to actually attend the hearing and mount a defense. They’ll let me off, I thought in my head as I stood before the city official in charge of hearing these cases, “Come on,” I told the guy, “I’m really sorry. I work nights. It was so cold. This is my first offense. I definitely won’t wait next time.” Halfway through I realized that I probably should have planned out my defense a little better, none of whatever I was saying sounded any better than a little kid trying to weasel his way into explaining to the teacher why he didn’t do his homework the night before. By the time I caught myself about to use my grandfather’s hundred dollar gift as an excuse, I gave up. But not before saying, “The defense rests.” I thought it would be funny, but nobody laughed, and I immediately felt like an idiot.

“Sorry pal,” the guy told me, “Better get up earlier next time.” And that was it. A hundred bucks for Christmas, a hundred bucks to the city for not shoveling my sidewalk. And I’m stuck here thinking, wondering if only I had made up a really good sounding excuse, like if I pretended to have the flu, or if I just left out that idiotic joke at the end, maybe I could have gotten out of it. Whatever, I’m going to buy a ton of rock salt and I’m just going to blanket that stuff outside at the first hint of snow. I’m not even going to let that stuff have a chance to accumulate. That’s what I’m going to do, soon, I’m going to go to the Home Depot and get a better shovel, one with an ice pick on the other side. Definitely soon.

I found a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk

I was walking down 21^st Street the other day when I noticed a twenty-dollar bill lying on the ground directly in front of me. “What are the chances?” I said out loud to myself as I bent down to pick it up, which I realized right away was a mistake, not picking up the twenty, but saying out loud, “What are the chances?” Because as soon as I did, there were these two guys pretty close to me, and I definitely caught their attention.

I wasn’t trying to flaunt my good fortune. I was genuinely happy. But one of the guys stopped and looked toward my direction, he said, “Hey, uh, I think that’s my twenty,” and I knew I was screwed. What was I going to do, protest? I didn’t have any defense. It wasn’t my twenty. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t his twenty either.

Still, I didn’t know how to proceed. In a situation like this, you either act or you don’t. If I hesitated at all, it could have started a fight, the guy might have gotten aggressive. And what if he did get aggressive? For all I knew it really was his twenty. I just had a gut feeling that it wasn’t. I know that if I were in his position, and it wasn’t my twenty, but I wanted the twenty, I would do exactly like he was doing, I’d try my hardest to pretend that it was mine, getting really upset that this other guy wouldn’t hand it over.

I just kind of stood there stuck in thought, until he started moving in to take it out of my hands. Luckily, that third guy chimed in, “Hey man, actually, I think that’s my twenty.” Now I could safely recoil my hand, even if just to help get to the bottom of this. Whereas before, I only knew that the twenty wasn’t mine, coupled with a hunch that the first guy was lying. Now I had two guys, one of them definitely lying, maybe even both of them lying.

“Really? Because I’m pretty sure this was my twenty,” I surprised even myself when those words came out of my mouth. It was a ballsy maneuver, but I figured, worst case scenario, two of us would be lying, meaning that there was no way I was getting teamed up on here.

But for real, I could just tell that all three of us were lying, because, again, I’m putting myself in a situation where I drop a twenty and then two other guys come over and make a claim on it, I’d be like, “All right, that’s my twenty, I’m taking it, bye.” But we were all just kind of a little too hesitant, nobody ready to make any direct accusations, everything was pretty civil so far.

And I still had the twenty in my hands. Should I try to make a run for it? I could have gotten away, again, I’m pretty sure I could have gotten away. I’m really fast, but I always like to keep a slight check on my abilities. The more and more I get used to just assuming that I can sprint my way out of any situation, it’s just setting me up for a huge fail when I try to get away from that one person capable of chasing me down.

“How about …” it was guy number three, “How about we all just split it?” and guy number two immediately jumps in, “Nope. That just proves that it wasn’t yours in the first place. My claim still stands. You?” He was talking to me, damn, did this guy have some sort of experience in situations like this? I didn’t know what to do, it was that same indecisiveness that I was dealing with when it was just me and him. I kind of held out my hand, he slowly moved in to make the grab.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s just hold on a second,” guy number three again said, “That’s not your twenty,” I recoiled my hand slightly, “You’re faking it. Tell me, where’d you drop it from? What pocket do you keep your wallet in? You got any other cash in there? Why didn’t that cash fall out? How you going to prove it’s yours? Huh?”

I couldn’t believe it, but it worked, kind of. At least, guy number two fell for it, the rapid-fire asking of way too many unnecessary yet detailed questions. He should have just kept answering them, one after the other, making stuff up if he had to, because he already had the upper hand. But he just stood there with his mouth open, just five seconds too slow.

And that’s when he caved, he said, “All right fine, let’s just split it.” So then I got a little ballsier, I thought, I’m the only one who hasn’t deviated from his original claim, “Actually guys,” I chimed in, “It’s actually my twenty, I’m going to …”

“No, nope, no chance pal, sorry,” it’s like they could just tell. Guy number two yanked it out of my hands and they both started walking to the McDonald’s on the corner. “Guys?” I called out, “Am I part of the split? Guys?”

I followed them inside, they both started ordering, “Guys, can I at least get some food too? Come on, a Big Mac? We can all get Big Mac meals. There’s enough.”

Guy number three gave me a look like he wanted to say, get the fuck out of here man, but then he looked toward guy number two, gave him a look like, what are you going to do? He turned to the cashier, and said, “And he’ll have a dollar menu double cheeseburger.”

I was like, “That’s it? Dollar menu?” Guy number three said, “Take it or leave it,” and his look got real stern, like I could tell he meant it.

“I’ll take it,” and I took it. Whatever, free double cheeseburger, right?