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.