Winter can be depressing, but you know things are bad when you rejoice at seeing the edges of your lawn–which isn’t even green–appear under melting snow. We’ve been under feet of the stuff for weeks, and are prepared to continue topping old snowfall totals for at least another week or more. Work and school have been affected, businesses are hurting for customers, and hospitals are overwhelmed with cold-related deaths, injuries and newborns coming to term and deciding for some odd reason that a blizzard is the ideal time to make their debuts.
Oh, and there is cabin fever, too. Those video games kids would normally spend 23 hours a day playing suddenly become boring when they have to be the only source of amusement while cooped up at home. The video store is not easy to get to, and cable on demand hasn’t seen a new decent movie in months, and the regular programming is either in reruns or focused on the Olympics (where, by the way, they were begging for snow due to unusually mild weather). Go figure.
The local networks have also decided to postpone regular programming during storm activity to spend 12 hours or more telling everybody about the snow. I don’t understand the logic behind this. Psychologically it’s more draining than watching the world out your front door vanish under impermeable white stuff. They interview people braving the cold to find an open quick mart. They show the radar maps every few minutes until those frontal systems start to look like an advancing enemy horde come to pillage our homes. The commentators start to get punchy and lose track of their scripts, but they struggle on with no apparent goal in mind. I’d prefer the escape found in Ellen DeGeneres or Dr. Phil to a full day of what I can see for myself outside my window.
I notice that the news segments are always about the same subjects when it snows: people buy out the shovels and ice melter at the local home stores, and supermarkets sell out of milk and bread. It’s not as if people don’t buy out bread on regular weekdays (this is especially inconvenient when the delivery truck hasn’t arrived on schedule), but I’d like to know what people do with their shovels from the last storm, or even last season. I know people like to buy the next year’s model car, but has it become necessary to buy a new shovel each year, too? If you’re breaking shovels, you’re either working too hard or those shovels were made in a very cheap shop.
Another thing about snow: everybody dresses to stay warm, not to look like a Dr. Zhivago postcard. The hat may not match the overcoat, and the boots may sound like the footfalls of a battalion, but we all have the same idea in mind, and we’re all just shoveling through it all and waiting to see it melt away when spring finally decides to show up. Sometime in June, if we’re lucky.
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