Thursday, January 6, 2005

“Don’t eat the yellow snow,” goes the old winter proverb, but the ancients who first uttered this didn’t tell us how to contend with the white snow. I left my apartment for an ironic sight today: a man who had set out with plow firmly attached to truck, ostensibly to dig us poor schmucks out of a foot-and-a-half of holiday cheer, stood idly by while he waited for help. The foul white stuff had ripped the plow clean off his truck. Happy New Year indeed, gentle reader.

I used to like snow, liked “playing” in it, which meant my sister and I would prance around in freezing weather for two or three hours, marveling over our poor attempts at impenetrable forts and hideous facsimiles of snowmen. We would invariably return with every possible strain of flu available to the public, only to repeat the process the following year.

I don’t like snow anymore. When you wake up to consecutive mornings, consecutive weeks, of dreary weather and–I don’t want to hear this term for another month, so help me Santa–wintry mix, things start to happen. Strange thoughts and even stranger stirrings creep into people’s minds, and the construction of snow art feverishly begins. All euphemism aside, we’re talking about a giant snow cock here, a 15-foot monstrosity erected from nothing but frozen water and hubris. This is a hallowed tradition for one of the dorms at my alma mater. I’ve also witnessed ice sculptures celebrating other bacchanal acts, seemingly willed into existence out of boredom. This is the stuff you don’t see in the viewbook.

How do you deal with all this snow? After wracking my brain for fifteen minutes, I’ve concluded you’ve got to get the hell out of town. Move. Move far, far away.