When I looked out the window at the snow last week, one thought went through my mind. “What is wrong with you people?”
Not you. Well, unless you’re someone who runs to the store in a panic, can’t drive in the snow and can do nothing but complain about the crews trying to clear the snow from the roads.
I don’t know why the presence of snow turns people insane. I have one friend who grew up in western Illinois and another who spent almost his entire life in Buffalo, N.Y.
The Midwesterner lives in Baltimore now and likes to refer to the people living in his new hometown as “snow sissies.” This is a family newspaper so I can’t print what my friend from Buffalo thinks of how people in Philadelphia react to snow.
Life doesn’t have to come to a standstill when we have a snowstorm. Late last year, I called a friend in Ohio when a storm ripped through there. He had been joking all day online about the “White Death,” so I wanted to check up on him.
He was distraught. Every store in the mall had closed. He had trouble finding a place to eat.
“I need my options,” he yelled into the phone.
I don’t take quite as dim of a view as my friends, but I see their points. Why do people act like each snowstorm is the first one? Why do the weather people predict doom every time flurries approach? Why do we continue to buy into it?
The college where I work got phone calls before flurries even started to fall from people trying to find out if we had closed the campus.
Does that make any sense at all?
The way I see it, 90 percent of those people are just lazy. So come up with your own excuse to skip class. If the other 10 percent are that worried about driving in flurries, they should stay home regardless of what people tell them.
It’s bad enough we have people who think that just because they have a truck or SUV, they can drive at any speed on any kind of road. If you haven’t noticed kids, they don’t plow down to the pavement around these parts.
And while I’m on the subject of plowing, can people please stop whining their driveway or the street corner being “plowed in?” I suppose you would prefer they not plow so your driveway can stay clear.
We have created a culture where we must panic every time snow approaches. Normal people don’t run to the store for toilet paper, bread and milk when there’s a miniscule chance they might have to stay in the house for the weekend.
Normal people get pizza rolls, several bottles of wine and chicken wings when they might have to stay in the house for the weekend. You can justify extra TP with a menu like that.
Besides, when you live in my house, baking cookies serves as a perfect way to distract a 4-year-old when it’s too cold for Mom and Dad to go outside and play in the snow.
That’s the way to enjoy a snow day.