Winter Blunderland

We're now a few footsteps into the month of December and I have to admit how much I hate the cold. It's not Canadian cold nor is it the cold of the morning-after-the-night-before stare of your significant other when you pulled the old "ding-dong" bit with your mother-in-law's breast after doing shots with your wife's cousin. No, it's just really the first "unpleasant" cold of the year. I walked outside to commune with nature on my way to get a coffee and saw it there, plain as a monkey head in the collection plate - snow. It wasn't much snow, but, it was if Mother Nature was spray painting a warning telling me, "Hey, Sparky, I'm still in charge around here."

It's not that I hate snow. Just keep it off my roads and out of the hands of adolescents when I'm driving down the street. There was a time when snow was the answer to all of my prayers. Now, you folks who have lived your entire lives in warm weather, you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. Please skip to the next story, have a laugh, and leave a complementary compliment. Snow was much more than frozen ice crystals. It meant Santa was coming, Christmas specials and egg nog. Remember hearing about the "Storm of the Century" that was predicted to come five to six times per Winter? Remember gathering around the static-y radio or the fuzzy television screen just dying on every word of the news anchor until the weather-person showed you the local map that had "48+" covering your area. All you cared about was waking up the next morning and listening for the school closings. No matter what school you went to, it was always the last school announced, or, you tuned in just after they announced your school and had to wait until the next. All the surrounding schools were off and your school was going to open "one hour late". Life was not fair! Dad had off, so he was in his robe reading the sports page and asking, "So, want to go sledding today? Oh, that's right, YOU have to go to SCHOOL today!" and laugh that evil Dad-laugh before flipping to the comics to see what Marmaduke was up that today.

There was always a kind of giddy edge to going out to play in the first real snow. Mom would wrap you up in long underwear, three pairs of socks, t-shirt, regular shirt, sweater, pants, snow pants, gloves, ski mask, hat, shoes and boots. Then, after she would buckle than last piece of sharp metal buckle, you told her you had to go to the bathroom.

Once you made the jail break into the white cold world of the outdoors, a specific truth hit you smack in the face like a neighbor’s snowball - it’s freaking cold out here! If you fell down, you stayed down until the Spring thaw. Nothing could get you back on your feet. You also had to beware what type of show was on the ground. Now, the Native Americans in Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest may have 100 different words for "snow" - we have two: "Packable and unpackable". Packable meant you could make snowballs easily, which meant more chance for trouble and more chance for getting bombarded by your friends. You can also build a snowman more easily in Packable snow. Now, this leads me to a point in my life of which I am not proud, but, my buddy, Ray, and I used to go tearing through the neighborhood at 10 p.m. with aluminum baseball bats and beat the tar out of the well-constructed snowmen in the community of Greentree. It wasn’t our best moment, but, it sure as hell was fun. Anyway, back to the snow. The unpackable snow was worthless. You couldn’t form a proper snowball, it didn’t harden on the streets to play hockey or tag rides on. Tagging rides was when you ran up to a car, grabbed its bumper, and let the car drive you all over town. It was illegal and highly dangerous - which is why it was probably so much fun.

For some reason, there were some mothers in the neighborhood who made their kids wear mittens instead of gloves. I never could figure this out. You couldn’t do anything in mittens and ended up with frostbite because you always took your mittens off for snowball fights, building forts and doing battle with the Dark Lord. And it was impossible to hold a baseball bat.

Nowadays, snow is just a nuisance. We can telecommute to work (some of us), have to shovel the driveway, sidewalk, and God-knows what else, according to whatever civic association to which you belong, and you have to drive in that stuff. And it’s not just you that you have to worry about; it’s that yahoo with the bald tires and rear-wheel drive careening maniacally into your lane that you have to worry about. There’s salt deposit, slush, dirty windows…the list goes on and on.

But still, I get that first shiver of excitement whenever I see the first real snowfall of the year. It takes me back and I want to make some hot chocolate and sit by the static-y radio again.

Don’t you?