The Exhausted Dad: Snow makes fun out of suffering and hard labor

My kids hate doing ALL the chores around the house.

Dishes, laundry, basic cleanup, garbage — everything requires multiple demands by me for any of them to do the work.

Enter the transformative influence of snowfall.

Since it didn’t snow in any meaningful way throughout December and January, my kids are especially eager to do anything outdoors right now. My two middle kids, ages 9 and 11, fight over who gets to use the better of the two shovels when they rush out to clear the driveway.

As much as I miss having little kids in the house, the fact that they’re bigger means I never have to pick up a snow shovel again. When they grow up and leave the house, I’m moving somewhere without a driveway.

I honestly don’t understand why they enjoy this particular chore so much. A lack of chronic lower back pain probably plays a role, but they still seem so miserable out there as I watch them from the living room window, sipping my warm coffee.

And yet, nothing I do seems to dissuade them from wanting to perform repeated manual labor in freezing weather conditions. Just as they finish shoveling the driveway, I pop my head out to remind them about removing the snow from the cars, and, if necessary, scraping the windshield.

Yes, I know the risks of allowing a 9-year-old to haphazardly remove snow and ice from the vehicles using sharp, oversized tools, but I figure she can’t cause any more damage than those wayward rocks that come crashing into my windshield while driving on the freeway every single day.

Even when the work is finished, my middle children enjoy performing pointless, arduous tasks in the snow. They’ll roll up a giant snowball until they physically can’t move it another inch. They’ll build and rebuild an igloo/cave that collapses over and over again. They’ll pull their 7-year-old younger brother on the sled on inclines and along bare streets.

When they do need a break, they plop down in the middle of the yard, face down into the snow. They enjoy burying each other and pretending to be as dead as those mountain climbers in all the Mt. Everest movies. Why? What kind of messed-up, make-believe game is this?

One time my 9-year-old daughter ran up to me excitedly after an extended “break” laying in the snow.

“Dad, dad! My hands are so cold I almost have frostbite!”

Would that really be an accomplishment? How would I explain that to the doctor?

“She really wanted to give herself frostbite, Doctor. I’m not going to stand in the way of her dreams.”

All this toiling in the snow, and yet, not a single one of them will walk the 5 feet between kitchen table and the sink to put away their dinner dish.

Small price to pay, I guess, for never touching the snow shovel again.

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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student, and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.