Cabin Fever

One of my favorite writers is Patrick McManus. For those of you who have not read his work, what’s wrong with you? He is one of the funniest outdoor humor writers I have ever read. Okay, he is the only outdoor humor writer I’ve ever read, but he is still hilarious. He wrote a short story about Cabin Fever he experienced as a child snowed in among the backwoods of Idaho. I don’t want to give away the ending, but I will tell you it involved white haired gnomes. See why I like his stories?

The reason I bring it up is the snow. We got some snow last night. By some I mean a butt-load of snow. For East Tennessee five inches of snow is a butt-load. Now before any of you people in places like Minnesota or New England start laughing at me… you already are, aren’t you? Anyway, there are a few things you have going for you that we don’t. You have little things like snow plows and drivers who know what they are doing. We don’t have those luxuries in the South. It’s supposed to be warmer down here.

Since it is not safe on the roads, I stay inside when we have horrendous, polar-vortex blizzards that leave us with a big, bad five inches of snow. That can lead to cabin fever. Now let me explain how this works. You can’t go outside for fear of falls, frostbite and getting run over on the second floor of the mall by Knoxvillians trying to drive in the snow. Yes, it is that bad. So you stay in and enjoy the companionship of your loved ones. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

All is well until the cable goes out due to the weather. So you check online to see what’s happening with your 500 Facebook friends whom you have never met in real life. That works for five minutes until your internet is taken out by a malicious icicle on the lines two blocks over. That’s okay because you have over 100 DVDs with movies you haven’t watched in months or years. Just as you are sliding the movie into the player, a tree limb becomes overloaded by the snow and hits the power line coming into the apartment complex. That’s not a problem because your laptop can play a couple of movies on a full charge. Well, it wouldn’t have been a problem if your son hadn’t used it to play World of Warcraft last night and forgot to plug it in after defeating a really nasty troll. Twenty-eight seconds into Spider-Man 2, your computer shuts down.

No TV. No internet. No power. No movies. No computer. And it’s all Al Gore’s fault for inventing global warming which is somehow responsible for colder winters, too. Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either. I just blame Gore. All that is left are books. As a writer, I think this is a good thing. My state of mind is not the best since everything I have tried seems to end in failure. Closing my eyes, I choose a random book. The complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. What could possibly go wrong reading stories of death and horror while stuck inside with nothing working while hanging out with family? I opened the book at random and began dramatically reading The Tell Tale Heart out loud so all could enjoy:

“TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily – how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”

After one paragraph my son informed me I was reading with too much emotion – almost like I was really feeling what I read. He took Poe away and handed me The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy instead. I think the snow is getting to him.