Ridiculous in the City

Outside snow is falling and I’m so excited it’s like a Pointer Sisters concert in here.

Something about snow just makes you feel good. The pure whiteness of the flakes as they gather on the ground, covering every surface with nature’s version of a clean slate; the quiet that follows a fresh snowfall, silencing a city that was screaming to be heard mere hours before; the still-palpable-after-all-these-years feeling that you just might get a snow day—that coveted, surprise release from commitments that causes you to well up with the warm hope in your stomach typically reserved for first loves, Tom Jones songs and scenes from Dirty Dancing.

“I carried a watermelon." And I got a snow day. Life rules.

Snow is damn sexy. It looks hot as it’s falling and just as hot when it’s lying down, spread like a luscious, whipped cream cheese on the ground. And who doesn’t love a good whipped cream cheese? You want to run out there and put down some fresh tracks, and stay inside watching it in equal measure. Snow is nostalgia. You feel like a kid, you feel like a mountain man, you feel like Bing Crosby in a sleigh, rocking a little flask of the good stuff as you survey the manicured tundra that is the backdrop of the movie of your life (in Bing’s case that’s a movie that stars white people, acting very white, in their white winter wonderland. In mine it stars one white girl, acting ridiculous, in her dirty slush paradise). Your heart says let’s make snow angels, but your brain says wet jeans are going to suck.

Briefly, you flash on frost bite you’ve known and loved, your fingertips tingling at the thought of it. You think of the time that guy in fourth grade got his tongue stuck on the frozen tetherball pole. Who the hell licks the tetherball pole? Wait, are people still playing tetherball? Then you remember the slip on the ice that bruised your ass, the numb skull, the icicle nostrils, the brutality of the wind smacking you in the face. God, winter blows.

But outside it looks so nice.

Snow is iconic. It’s legendary. Snowmaggeddon, the Storm of the Century, the Great Blizzard of fill in the blank—people love to label a storm. And they love to document a storm. In the era of social media, no good storm comes without a litany of selfies to communicate just how bitchin’ that blizzard really was. And you know it was if you have need to use the word “bitchin.’”

A cue to stick your tongue out, a call to arms to amass an arsenal of snowballs, the setting of many an epic, blizzard-soaked sporting event (Packers vs. Broncos 1984, anyone?); snow rules and humans can’t help themselves but to enjoy the absolute shit out of it. And why the hell not?

Soft snow falling brings with it the sensation of peace and of calm, like we can hit the pause button and just listen to the stillness for a few. Right about now that seems like just what the doctor ordered. A few snowbound hours to take a breath and exhale the noise will do us all some good.

Because nobody puts Baby in a corner, not even a blizzard.