We got a boatload of snow this weekend (for my Canadian readers, that’s roughly a metric boatload), and I still haven’t bought a snowblower, so I had plenty of time to reflect on snow as I dug us out.
Snow, as seen at different ages:
Childhood: Cool! Snow forts! Snowmen! Snowball fights!
Teens: whatever.
Twenties: whatever.
Thirties: #*#(@*%&*@*$@)$@($*%
To add insult to injury, the snow fell Saturday-into-Sunday, meaning we don’t even get a snow day out of it.
We had planned to attend a baptism on Sunday (what The Boy called a ‘bathtism,’ which is actually a pretty good description, if you think about it), but had to cancel. We had planned to go to a major sports event on Saturday night, but had to cancel. So we had a very wound-up boy, a somewhat wound-up girl, a disappointed mom, and a disappointed and increasingly achy dad.
Grrr.
Times like these I regret having been born without the ski gene. The ski gene allows otherwise-normal people to actually celebrate snow, since it brings with it the opportunity to pay lots of money to go careening down mountains at high speeds, surrounded by other people doing the same. I don’t have that gene, and neither does The Wife. If there’s anything to natural selection, I assume that the ski gene will gradually die out, as its bearers do Sonny Bono’s into the next world. Until then, we just have to humor them.
(I’ve noticed that many of the same people afflicted with the ski gene also have the camping gene. These people pile astonishing amounts of Gore-Tex and Fleece into their SUV’s to get back to nature. Don’t ask me...)
The one winter sport I’ll admit enjoying is the luge. I’ve never actually tried it, but it looks insanely fun on tv. It’s the ultimate suburban dad sport: lie down, go fast, win medals. Sign me up! That German ‘sausage’ dude is secretly laughing at us.
Every year at this time I resolve to buy a snowblower. Maybe that’s for the forties...
