By Andrew Weiss
I want to give myself a gold star for not slipping on ice today.
My mood Wednesday shifted from “early morning snow day excitement” to “wow, I’m going to make a snowman!” to the final, worn down stage of “today is miserable.”
Snow days are supposed to be fun— at least, that’s what television always told me. As a native Floridian, born and raised in the Sunshine State, I looked at snow with the same mythological aura as something out of The Odyssey. My state rarely experienced the white fluffy stuff, and therefore never knew much, if anything, about the negative side to a snow storm.
We pictured sledding and snowball fights, not shoveling and trees falling. Besides, palm trees only fall in hurricanes where I’m from.
My first snow day, with the Stanley Cup of snow. For winners only, of course.
How much of a positive is snow in Florida? My junior year in high school, back in Tampa, the weather reached a frigid 27 degrees. For a city that bundled up when the thermometer dipped to the 60s, this was an all-time evil. However, when an army of down jackets and snow boots trudged through the gates of my school, we had to stop and stare at something few of us had ever seen.
Snow? Not even close.
The baseball field, part of our little downtown Tampa campus, was covered in dew. Frozen dew.
A mass of students spent the day trying to make a single snowball out of frozen dew.
When I came up to Quinnipiac, I mentally prepared myself for snow. I pictured warm and rosy thoughts of sledding with friends, skating on frozen ponds, and the typical TV nonsense that gets thrown your way.
My first snow day was exactly that: snowmen were made and subsequently torn asunder, hills were shredded from cafeteria trays and trash can lids, and snowballs were— finally— made.
Since then, snow has lost a bit of luster.
Wednesday, with snow swirling around so heavily that the sun checked out early, snow was miserable.
You’ve got me, Northeastern United States. I officially hate snow.