I See... The Rescue

We were deep in the throes of Snowpocalypse February 2010, but all was right with the world. Work and school was cancelled, and the whole family was watching growing snow drifts peacefully envelope the home around us. We had a store of dry firewood, lots of yummy food storage, several thick mink blankets, and a Star Wars marathon on TV. We were hunkering down for warm toasty day inside the house; with four-foot snowdrifts developing, there was no good reason to start digging out until later in the evening, or even the next day. We had everything we needed.

Or did we?

A couple of hours into our indoor vacation my wife and I had simultaneous telepathic desires to comfort ourselves with a little chocolate. The horror in our eyes betrayed the terrible reality we now faced: there was no chocolate in the house! There... was... no... chocolate... in the... house!

Horror transformed into panic as we frantically rifled through several strategically place hideouts scattered about the house looking for forgotten stashes of M&Ms and Hershey bars- but they had all been depleted. The blizzard raging outside merely added to our sense of isolation, entrapment and desperation. How would we survive the next two days without chocolate?

To quote the Grinch, the one who tried to steal Christmas, “ we puzzled and puzzled til our puzzlers were sore,” desperately exploring ways to satisfy our desires for chocolate. Then the cartoon light bulb appeared above my wife's head, and a slow, almost mischievous grin broke across her face. “I think,” she paused for a moment, struggling to season her excitement with reason, “that there is a big bag of Tootsie Pops in the back seat of my SUV!”

We knew what we had to do. We immediately went to work building a plan to rescue the Tootsie Pops, trapped in an SUV surrounded by four-foot snow drifts.

We bundled up carefully and assaulted the snow with a fervor and dedication rarely seen among our family members. We shoveled with a purpose. We needed those Tootsie Pops. They were our only hope. It took us 30 minutes of solid labor to reach the car and liberate them.

Soon life was good again. We were back inside the house, snuggled up underneath thick blankets watching Yoda train Luke Skywalker to be a Jedi... and sucking the flavor out of Tootsie Pops.