Snow! (or My Treatise to Adulthood)

I grew up on Long Island. I remember many many winters during my childhood where it would snow. In fact, up until recently (thanks a lot, GLOBAL WARMING!), you could expect at least 2 to 3 snowstorms per winter.

Every time there would be a snowstorm I would get excited beyond belief. I loved playing outdoors in the snow. I even just loved sitting inside with a mug of hot chocolate and watching the snow fall from my window. If it was during the week I got to glue myself to the TV and anxiously await my school district to be listed in the “closed” category (or, in less cool situations, the “delayed opening” category).

My parents and other adults I would come in contact with on these snowy days would usually say the same thing: “Oh, you may love it now, but when you’re my age you’ll haaaatte it!”

“No way, man!” I’d retort the way only a child in the late 80’s/early 90’s could, “I’m gonna alllways love snow! FOREVER!!”

Well, I went back on a lot of my childhood promises about myself: I don’t own a pizzeria like I said I would when I was 6; I don’t live in a house full of secret passageways like I always dreamed about. But the one thing I still stand by is my love for snow. I fucking love snow.

I know I have to shovel it, clean it off my car, drive in it, etc. But I just don’t care about all of that. I love the snow.

To me, snow is something wonderful. Every other time nature does something to us, it’s always annoying, scary, or both. Think about it: when there’s going to be torrential downpours, hardly anyone’s gleaming with excitement. Same thing goes for hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic explosions, and a whole myriad of other things the weather can dish at us.

But when there’s supposed to be a blizzard, most children (and those lucky adults who didn’t let everything about their childhood die) are ecstatic. It’s a wonderful thing.

And why, you ask? Well, I look at it this way: when it’s supposed to snow, you go to bed that night and wake up the next morning and experience a whole different world. When you look out the window, everything’s coated in a beautiful white blanket. It’s pure again. You’re an explorer. You can go run around and make the first set of footprints on your front yard, throw the first snowball in the whole world, take a sled to your favorite hill and make it a roller-coaster. Snow shuts down schools and businesses; it makes everyone have to stay home. And why is that great? Well, us humans were born this way: with nothing to do but be with this big spinning planet we’re on and make the best of it. Snow gives us that opportunity.

It’s not everyday a business man can gather around with a bunch of kids and teenagers and play with them while they all laugh and smile, but snowball fights allow this to happen. It’s cleansing and beautiful. You get to shower off all your adulthood and responsibility for one day, or maybe just one hour, and let that kid inside of you go out and play.

But even all of this talk can’t do it justice. The only person who ever got it right was the amazing Mr. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes. That man put more beauty into this world through his comics than there are snowflakes in a snowstorm. Don’t believe me? Go do a Google image search for “last Calvin and Hobbes comic.” Read that. That’s pretty much what I try to make my life philosophy: “Let’s go exploring.”

It’s so powerful to me: we’re all going to live and die and not see everything there is to see and not do everything there is to do, and that’s more than just fine: that’s wonderful. That means that for our entire lives we’ll have the chance to go out and explore this world of ours. And even if it’s with a familiar house or a familiar hill, or with a familiar friend or loved one, that’s fine too: because it’s what you do that makes it exploring. Turn the familiar into the unfamiliar. Go out and make life worth living. And that’s just what snow does for me: it turns the landscape of our town or our city into something new. The possibilities are endless.

That’s why I know I’ll never let that kid inside of me die when it comes to snow. There’s no way. I’ll be out there with the kids making snow angels and building forts. I’ll always be ready to go exploring.

See, I just don’t have this kind of philosophy when it comes to my childhood dreams of being a pizza-man. Sorry six-year-old Mike. “Pizza’s awesome” just isn’t enough to take a paycut and learn a new trade.

Although, pizza is QUITE awesome….hmmmm…

Keep the love alive, everyone. Let’s go exploring!

- Mike