TheBanyanTree: The Window IS Down, Dad!

[B Drummond]

Background:

[Yesterday my daughter fell down some steps at our house when she, in a hurry 
because she was late for work, fell down a flight of steps.  The steps were 
coated with ice, frozen sleet and a layer of ice over those two.  The hand 
rail was also coated with a layer ice ice about 1/2 inch thick and it was 
useless as a support.  She fell the full length of the stairs, hind end first 
from the top rung of the stairs to the bottom.  She, unlike our dear Maria, 
was not hurt other than a badly bruised backside.]

Yesterday, after my daughter had fallen down the icy stairs on her backside,
ESPECIALLY after falling down the stairs and paying such a price, she insisted 
on going in to work.

After hearing the clamor on the stairs, rushing out to see if she was injured, 
finding she wasn't hurt badly, and getting my wits back and seeing that she 
was hell bent to go to work, regardless of the weather,  I decided to help 
her get the car's ice coating chipped off enough to be able to drive it.

One side of the car was iced over worse that the other (the driver's side had 
a heavier coating of ice than the passenger's side)  After chipping, whacking 
and scraping away ice on the windshield, the back window, the headlights, the 
tail lights and the passenger's side windows, I proceeded to start on the 
driver's side windows.

But before, after I got the passenger's side ice chipped away enough that the 
door could be opened,  my daughter had gotten in the car and started the 
engine.  She turned the heater on defrost and set it at MAX, turned the rear 
glass defroster on (the heat tape embedded in the glass, which, by the way, 
we discovered has now given up the ghost and defrosted not a lick of ice at 
all) She then sat there and waited in the car, with the radio going,  for me 
to finish chipping and scraping that confounded ice.

When I got to the driver's side I did the window behind the driver's seat 
first.  It was coated with at least 3/8 inch of ice.  It fought all the way 
but I eventually got it.  My hands were freezing, I had busted a knuckle, and 
I was bleeding from a cut in the palm of my right hand by this time.

As I started on the passenger's  side window, I had an idea.  "Sweetheart, I 
need for you to try to open the door,"  I told my daughter.  The door was 
frozen shut, of course, and she had the radio playing so she didn't hear me 
well.  "Huh," she said.

I told her again, this time telling her to work the door opening handle and 
kinda' bang against the door with her shoulder, me thinking that that would 
break the ice around the door and make a lot of it come off at one time --  in 
a sheet, mind you.

She still had trouble making out what I said, so . . . she decided to roll 
down the window.  The car had been running long enough that the heater had 
started warming the inside of the car enough that it was just beginning to 
melt a small, small portion of the ice in places.  One of those places was 
the driver's side window.

The window came down fine but, remarkably, there was still a window between 
us.  The whole ice window, a 3/8 inch sheet of perfectly formed ice window, 
stayed in place!  Even though the window was down, the "window" WASN'T down!

We both started laughing our hind end's off at that.  It struck us as so 
funny, especially under the circumstances.

After we recovered, I instructed her to roll the window back up (didn't want 
the ice window to get busted and fall INTO the car -- what a cold mess that 
would'a made.  She did and it did.  And then I worked on chipping and scraping 
that off, too.

With that done I instructed her again to open the door, using her body as a 
"ram" against the door and by this time that worked excellently.

Thus freed fully from the ice, I made up my mind then to chauffeur her, as I 
trust my driving better than hers on a dry road, much less an icy one. 

Arriving safe, but late, to her job she put in her day's work and I picked her 
up later that day, when, by the way, the roads were in somewhat better 
condition.

When she got in the car that evening, I asked her, "How'd it go today, 
Sweetheart?"

Her answer?  "Fine, Dad, unless, of course,  I tried to sit down."


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