The Joy and Pain of Snow

Snow is one of those things that is either a magical gift from heaven or a terrible curse, depending on your view- point.

Nearly every kid in el- ementary school is fond of the white stuff. In the recess yard of Waitsburg Elementa- ry on a snowy morning, one will often find undersized children pushing snowballs taller than themselves. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. In first grade (if not earlier), we were told that it was against the rules to throw snow, lest it have shards of ice or something similarly nasty in it. For purposes of easier enforcement "don't throw it" quickly became "don't pick it up".

That bummed the student body out until some innova- tive tyke reasoned that if the snow touched the ground the entire time, it didn't count as picking it up. Therefore, while snowmen were out of the question, four-foot snowballs were not. This led, naturally, to contests of size. Inevitably, some children strung their snow- balls together to make forts, and one year the fourth and fifth graders collaborated to make an exceptionally long chain of them, which the fifth graders then decorated (using squirt bottles full of colored water) to look like a dragon.

High schoolers, on the other hand, have more var- ied opinions of the fluffy stuff. Lots of people (myself included) still love it. It's sort of magical the way it gently drifts down from the sky, covering all the muddy alleys and dying lawns and slushy streets with a perfect, pristine, smooth blanket of the purest white. And it doesn't hurt that snow oc- casionally causes two-hour delays either. (Hey, I like school as much as the next person, but that's two extra hours of sleep.) However, most people with drivers' licenses are significantly less enam- ored than I am with snow. Snow can be tough to drive through, piling on windshields and occasionally closing roads. Slush and ice often accompany it. Snow makes a mess on the car floor, snow creates constant motion that can be distract- ing to a driver, and snow can pose other hazards as well.

Most of the students currently in the Waitsburg school system have, at some point or another, been sled- ding on the hill in the cemetery, either not knowing about the laminated No Sledding In The Cemetery sign or thinking that it refers simply to the areas with graves. My little broth- er went down there once. There's a rather windy road to the top of the cemetery hill, and some kids thought it would be a good idea to heap snow on the road and build a jump. This worked well until a truck, going down the road, ran into the jump. Instead of collapsing, however, the mounded snow supported the weight of the pickup, and the trunk drove onto the jump, tilted, pivoted, and skidded down the side of the hill.

Nobody was hurt. No tombstones were knocked over. The truck wasn't dam- aged. I think all the sleds even made it out unscathed. But the story just goes to illustrate that there's more to snow than fluffy white flakes and days off of school. Also, it's hard to tell what's ahead when everything's white.

It's been snowing half- heartedly this past week or so. There's always someone in any class who, after hav- ing consulted their Smartphone, gleefully predicts snow.

And there's always some- one who groans, thinking of the long drive home.