I set out Sunday morning in the snow with the promise of freedom toast and a kind word. I turned around and came home ten minutes later after discovering three things:
1. Plooblewagon’s boy-racer low-profile tires love dry pavement, but they get all confused and belligerent when they encounter anything slippy.
2. The vast majority of other vehicles I encountered were SUVs “many of them two-wheel drive, which is the stupidest thing ever” piloted by sorority girls driving far too quickly and running stop signs while talking on cell phones.
3. I don’t like doing things I’m no good at.
“It didn’t make me feel any better when I watched the Monte Carlo rally Sunday night and saw people driving 80 miles an hour on roads I would be reluctant to walk on.”
If you’re from some place that has real winters and you’re aching to scoff at my wimpishness, remember that I live in North Carolina, so we don’t have snow plows, we don’t have snow tires, and we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. And since it doesn’t happen very often, we can afford to avoid the snowy and icy roads and hunker down in slippers-and-pay-per-view mode. Even so I will admit it is a bit ridiculous that one inch of snow will shut down the entire state and cause a run on the grocery stores that resembles the evacuation of Saigon and leaves shelves denuded of milk, bread and eggs. “I’m stealing from some stand-up comedian here, but what is it about snowstorms that makes people crave French toast?”
I was born in New Jersey but I grew up here, so winter weather meant no school. It takes a long time to overcome that nostalgic memory. When I first started working for myself in 1995, I woke up one morning to an ice storm and thought, “Cool! I don’t have to go to work.” Then I remembered that I worked at home, so essentially I was trapped in the office.