The Decision

                Steven had given it deep consideration for a long time.  One of the few habits his parents had instill in him that weren’t completely crippling to his psyche was to always be incredibly thorough.  He always took at least 20 minutes to read a menu at a restaurant.  Picking something on Netflix to watch took upwards of an hour and a half.  When he applied for his current job, it took him almost 6 months.    The process that brought Leonard into the band had been incredibly exhaustive.

                So Leonard knew what it was to be confident in a decision.  He had good reason to never doubt himself ever.  This nervousness that he felt was completely foreign to him.  He had done all the research, created his customary charts and graphs, and thought out many possible scenarios.  It made sense to ask Susan to marry him now.

                Then why did Steven had this pit in his stomach?  It must be the possibility that she would say no.  Steven was not accustomed to taking risks, another habit he had inherited from his parents.  He carried an umbrella every day, regardless of the weather.  He always had a ten dollar bill in his sock, and he had 3 life insurance policies.  His dentist hated him due to the fact that he never had anything wrong with his teeth.  He brushed and flossed three times a day.

                So, when he decided to ask Susan to marry him, it was a completely logical decision based on research and thought.  Financially and legally it made a lot of sense.  They got a long quite well- Steven had never met a woman who understood Steven’s “particular” ways as much as Susan.  Also, Steven was quite sure that Susan felt the same way.  They had discussed several times the logical steps their relationship was bound to take.

                This must be love, Steven thought, that annoying, non-quantifiable thing that caused people to feel and do strange things.  This was the only thing that could explain why Steven, a man who spent a year researching what hat to buy, was worried that Susan would say no.  Or, if she said yes, what would happen after that.  Steven wished the universe did not torture him so.  Steven sighed, put the ring in his pocket, and opened the door.

Dibs

Steven stood in the window with his coffee mug in his hand. He looked out at the scene before him and grimaced. The street looked like a yard sale of the damned. Lawn chairs lay in the street like plastic corpses. Here and there he saw an odd baby stroller or plank of wood. He made a double take as he glimpsed a clothes line, complete with shirt, adorning one spot. This was Chicago in the time of dibs.

This bizarre phenomenon happened every year around the same time. Whenever Chicago got a big snow storm, a sense of entitlement would swell up amongst the population. All sense of moral decency and good will would go out the window. Steven observed neighbors who would greet each other cordially on a normal day resort to near blows over a tiny patch of shoveled asphalt. If Steven was a keener observer of the human condition, he might be inclined to dig into this pattern further. Surely there must be some kind of deep, primitive instinct behind man's willingness to resort to such chaos.

Steven himself was not participating. He had smartly made room in his garage days ago. The temporary set back of not being able to use that wonderful space for his other passions was offset by the pure convenience of being above it all. He got to float above the pettiness on a bed of concrete and carefully shoveled snow. He could use his vehicle at his leisure, no slave to the aspirations of his neighbors and their petty, pathetic, attempts to own the un-ownable.

Steven knew in a few days it would all be over. Either the weather would break, providing the heat to melt much of this prodigious snow pack and render dibs obsolete, or, and Steven preferred this option, the city would come through and haul everything away. Steven quite enjoyed the idea that somewhere there is a vast dibs graveyard. A lot filled with chairs and buckets and broken senses of superiority. They should give tours. Steven would certainly venture out in this weather for that.