Dave…

Dave

Dave’s car inched forward. It was now raining furiously as he attempted to guide his grey-blue Buick along the ever darkening streets. Through the rain, Dave could not help but feel a sense of guilt. Today should have been sunny.

The car was now rolling steadily towards home, when the reality of another day of disappointment began to settle between the cracked leather seats. As Dave drove on, he couldn’t help but notice the remnants of a summer day gone wrong. The billowing clotheslines, disrupted dinner parties and abandoned garden tools were all his fault.

Dave’s life was a never ending guessing game with the elements. Each morning he woke up, kissed his wife and three kids goodbye, stepped out the front door and made an odd seven and a half step shuffle to the driver’s side of his 1981 Buick. He’d then pull open the door, drop his battered brown briefcase on the passenger’s side and snap on the car radio hoping to be greeted by the morning wail of Neil Young.

Dave thrived on routine. His morning routine was followed by his arrival at work. A right hand turn into the parking lot, followed by a swift left into the last remaining spot along the back wall of the station. As the car shuddered to a halt, his right hand was already upon the battered briefcase and his left poised to ensure a smooth exit from the vehicle. He then proceeded towards the plain double doors of CFCN Alberta.

As Dave reached his desk, a barrage of numbers, figures and charts jumped at him from around the room. National data every ten minutes, regional data on the sevens and local reports twelve times a day starting at 7:00am. Just walking into his office was enough to break Dave’s spirit anymore. He was getting older and the constant pattern of calculations and warnings were beginning to wear him down. Every day he told people what to wear, where to go, what to do and when to do it; he was the region’s surrogate parent.

But what hurt the most were the days when he got it wrong. When he told people the wrong thing to wear, the wrong place to go, the wrong thing to do or the wrong time to do it. He lived in constant fear of being wrong, because in this day in age, no one was safe from the wrath of the public. But nothing ever changed for Dave. The mornings in the car; days of charts, scattered showers, low pressure systems and probability of precipitation summed up his life; the life of the county weatherman.

So as the grey-blue Buick rolled closer to home, Dave took a deep breath and readied himself to do it all again tomorrow.