Tag Archives: Youth

Snow Day, Part 2

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I didn’t go sledding – I had the grumpier kind of snow day, where I had to shovel my car out of the snow and deal with the icy, snow-covered roads. I suppose that means I’m an adult now.

It’s strange how a break from the ordinary changes as we grow. To young children, snow is a welcome change – probably as much because it is interesting as because it cancels school, but still. The system being broken pleases them. If the system stayed broken, they wouldn’t be happy with the consequences, but being broken allows them to do just what they want – play.

When you have a job or a social life or college or whatnot, the snow hurts routine. It impedes and says, you cannot do what you planned to. You must live differently for today, and that’s scary, the same way that power outages scare people. Most people, there basic reaction to a power outage is to try and restore power, or find a generator, or run movies off of their computer while it has power. They strive to replace the downed electric lines with the best substitute available. But power outages grant such a massive opportunity to live differently – to force your family to play poker by candlelight when they’d normally never do anything together, or have a nerf war in your dorm hall which would never happen if people has the lure of electronics. Not that I dislike electronics (I love them), but if given the chance to experience the world in a different way, why not?

And so, just like with power outages, with snow, we try to work past it’s hindrance and make everything as normal as can be. Instead of not driving, we shovel our driveways and bail out our cars. Adults rarely sled or have snowball fights or adapt to the sudden shift in environment; the routine has become too strong, too ingrained. I know I generalize, but I don’t generalize with the intent of patronizing. I love routine; it’s comfortable to me. I could’ve sled today, but didn’t, simply because it was too cold. The different disturbs me.

But maybe it should not. Perhaps that is the key to staying young.

Snow day!

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Downy flake descends over Wall Township, and the high school cancels classes tomorrow. A snow day.

Snow. Such a beautiful substance. People nostalgize over it. “I remember the snow days of my youth . . . sledding down the big hill right around the corner, then coming home and having hot chocolate. And there was no school!”

People complain over it: “Be careful driving, the roads are icy today from the snow, and they haven’t even cleared some of the roads yet. I shoveled the driveway all morning, my back’s killing me. Can’t the government do the same for the roads?”

It’s entrancing to look upon, especially as it falls. It feels different from rainfall, because it makes no noise. With rain, the patter the fills up the background of everywhere is calming. It reminds you constantly of the rain’s presence. You can tune out and tap into the outside downpour, or if you’re outside, you can close your eyes and feel as if the earth is peeing on you. But with snow, it is much different. When you sit inside your house in your pj’s, you know it is snowing because you have to turn the thermostat up again. Snow is visual. Sometimes rain, when its thin enough, scattered enough, and fast enough, can disappear to the eye when viewed from behind a window. But the same never happens to snow: a quick glance out the window and you’re instantly aware of it’s total dominance of the landscape. It erases the blemishes of grass and vegetation. Snow is the communist’s weather: It equalizes, erases distinctions, boundaries. The high-class roads and lowly grasses are made one beneath a blanket of snow.

Only two weeks ago, I spent an hour bailing my car out of two-foot deep snow, which had surrounded it on all sides. After much struggling, a friendly professional with a snow-blower put his hands on the hood of my car and pushed it, while I sat inside, with the gear in neutral, and steered it free. I escaped the snow. But sometimes it gets you: Nikelia fell on her ass twice when we walked back to my home earlier that same day, because the ice on the walk ways of campus was well-hidden by the white blanket of snow.

It rarely snows on Christmas in Wall, only once in my memory, and of that memory, I only remember that it snowed on that Christmas, not what gifts I received or whether I liked them.

I suppose I’ll go sledding tomorrow, down the big hill right around the corner, then come home and have hot chocolate. And there’ll be no school for us collegians, reciting the script of a youthful snow-day as if we never grew up, rejoicing that school is cancelled, school is cancelled! – even if we were never going to be there in the first place.