by Andrew Franz

Created on: January 12, 2009

Snow gently drifts from the skies, quiet falling angels gently kissing children's cheeks. Serenity surrounds as the snow muffles the sounds of those children whipping snow balls at each other. A dog bounds, leaping to and fro in the frosty snow. He comes up with a mouthful, munching, attacking, and killing the white stuff. An elderly couple embraces, looking out of their huge bay windows, taking in the beauty. The scene belongs in a snow globe, everyone frolicking and cavourting, except one.

A man, nay, a knight clad in flannel and carhardt armor wields his tool of devastation on the frost below. He plunges his plastic device of driveway purification into the serene surroundings. His grunts break the silence, followed by the shovel's slice through the powder. With another heaving grunt he sends his victims hurdling away from his covered '03 cavalier.

A scarf masks his scowling demeanor, with breathe still billowing through and clouding his eyes. The frigid mist glazes them, the neighborhood unaware of his leering intent. His wife had put his boots away in some unknown chasm of the attic, and his desperate search yielded no gold. Instead, he struggled to find footing with his indoor soccer shoes. His pink gloves matched his cheeks, and being two sizes too small, stung his hands more than the cold's bite.

The knight looked up at the night and cursed God for creating snow and wives that just had to get to spinning class. "For fifty bucks a month it wasn't working very well," he thought, "I should be married to a super model."

"Are you done yet?" his wife heaved out the door while clutching a chicken wing with a pudgy hand.

"I would be if you weren't nagging me every two seconds," he mumbled barely audible.

"What did you say?," she snapped back, ears like a rabbit.

"I'll be done in a minute." Everyone has their own dragons to slay, and damsels to save. Unfortunately for this hero, his damsel left her ladylike ways long ago when she left a size 8 dress, and his dragon was compounding rapidly. As soon as he had dug out half the driveway, the other half needed to be done again. He had gone back and forth several times, the embankments about him continuously growing taller. Soon, he was stooping down to place the shovel to the earth, then raising the shovel high over his head to the pile. His pudgy distressee, with her ratty mud hair, and her arm cancles, pressed her nose at a window to see how the progress was coming.

The faithful shoveler redoubled his resolve, continuing

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