Here's a tremendous unmet business opportunity

Knock. Knock.

Who's there?

Neighborhood kid.

Neighborhood kid who?

Neighborhood kid who will shovel your driveway after a storm that leaves a foot of snow (before drifting).

This is not about knock-knock jokes. This is about a dreamland.

Not a single kid knocked on my door Monday after the snowstorm.

I know there are teenagers in Cape Girardeau. There are little kids and there are adults, so I know there are teenagers hanging around somewhere.

Once upon a time there would have been competing teens showing up to shovel snow. If the first kid said he would do the job for five bucks, you said OK. When the second kid came along, he was crushed to find out some eager beaver beat him to it.

That's real life. It's a good lesson. If you want to earn money, get up earlier than the next guy.

Teenage boys apparently don't get up early any more. They don't get up, period, if school is called off. If they get up at all, they don't go trudging through a foot of snow to knock on my door and offer to shovel snow.

To be honest, there are no teenage boys who live close to my house that I know of. We live in a neighborhood where most folks are retired.

The young couple across the street has four-wheel-drive vehicles and a flat driveway. They don't have to worry about shoveling snow.

The college-age men, also across the street, have huge pickups that go through snow with ease. They aren't in shoveling mode either.

That pretty much leaves just me.

And a driveway that has enough of an incline that it has to be shoveled. If it isn't, I might be able to get from the garage to the street in our car, but we would never make it back up the driveway. We can thank whoever planted the now enormous magnolia tree that blocks all sunlight from most of our driveway.

Here's what I learned Monday while shoveling a foot of snow from our driveway and snarling about shiftless teenagers:

1. "You're not getting any younger" isn't just a saying. It's the dadgum truth.

2. Muscles that are only used once a winter -- and sometimes not every winter -- give up when a foot of snow covers your driveway.

3. Statistics about heart attacks among out-of-shape men who should know enough to let teenagers shovel their driveways fly through your head, especially when the temperature is barely into two digits

4. Modern over-the-counter pain killers probably would kick in much quicker if you took them immediately after your wife first suggested them. I'm just guessing on that one.

5. Ditto for the heating pad.

6. The city snowplow will always -- always -- plow your street AFTER you have shoveled your driveway, leaving a slushy berm of snow that has to be removed -- using the same muscles and aging heart as before.

7. Finding the Southeast Missourian under a foot of snow in a double-wide driveway that is only half shoveled is like hitting the jackpot at the casino. And it's a super-duper bonus when the newspaper is completely dry.

8. Hot soup is extra special after a couple of hours of shoveling snow, even though I think it would warm my icy toes much more quickly if I poured the soup directly on them -- a theory I have yet to test.

9. Why does the wind start blowing after you've shoveled? This leads to more snow in the driveway, since the magnolia leaves refuse to hold on to the white stuff.

I must admit there was a silver lining in the clouds that brought us Monday's snow. And it was this: We got snow. A foot of it. Not ice. Not freezing rain. We were so lucky.

And before some teenage girl all caught up in political correctness gets all riled up because I only mentioned teenage boys as potential snow shovelers: Listen carefully.

If you are a teenage girl who wants to tackle my driveway after a 12-inch snowfall, please -- PLEASE -- knock on my door. And the going rate is much more than $5.

And if a teenage girl shows up to shovel my drive, it will prove one more time that teenage girls are so much smarter than boys, particularly when it comes to business acumen.

I'm not just saying that. Really, I'm not.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.