Everyone beamed at him, or at least, nearly everyone. He singled out Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a girl that Zaphod had picked up recently while visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little knob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress, she looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light-years from Damogran. Trillian wasn't anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him.
"Hi, honey," he said to her.
She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly--but by this time he was looking at something else.
"Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote.
The next thing he said though was not of use to them. One of the officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote-control device in his pocket. Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down the middle, split and slowly folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they'd built it that way.
Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty meters long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mind-boggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wrenching device ever conceived, a device that made this starship unique in the history of the Galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named--the Heart of Gold.
"Wow," said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't much else he could say.
He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. "Wow."
I find myself in the same situation I've been in many times these past couple weeks. I'm sitting at my kitchen table, typing this blog post. My kids are home, dismissed early from school because of a snowstorm. I just looked out my window at the white stuff piling up, and what just went through my mind is exactly what Zaphod voices about the Heart of Gold: "Wow."
I'm getting tired of winter storm warnings and ice storm warnings and the sound of plows chewing up the streets. Since the ice storm last Monday, I think schools across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan have been closed more than they've been open. And there's a good chance tomorrow morning that they will all be closed again because this storm is supposed to continue all night long.
In about an hour, the gentleman who does my plowing will be by. I'll have to put on my boots and coat and go outside to move the vehicles in my driveway to get everything cleared. Thank goodness for him. When I got home this afternoon, I spent a good 45 minutes just shoveling out my daughter's car and pushing snow out of the way. I wouldn't have the energy to keep up with winter this year if I didn't have the aid of a person with a pickup truck and a plow. In fact, I'd probably just curl up in a fetal position every time snow was in the forecast.
This afternoon, as the winter storm was just getting started outside, my boss at the surgery center where I work appeared for another meeting, to outline the plans for dismantling the place. Packing stuff up. Throwing stuff out. Now, I know that I cannot change this situation. It's going to happen whether I help with the process or steadfastly refuse to participate. There's a part of me, however, that simply wants to say, "If you want to shut this place down, you better find a whole army of people to help you."
I won't do that, of course. I need the work and health insurance. It's just that I remember when my sister cut the ribbon to open the surgery center over 20 years ago. I remember how happy she was, proud of her accomplishment. And I also remember how she fought to keep the place up and running. I don't really relish being a part of the undoing of all her hard work.
This whole moment in my life feels like a snowstorm that just won't stop. Everything piling up and up.
Saint Marty is tired of shoveling.
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