My husband just called me.
“Honey, do we have an ice scraper?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought you had one.”
“If I do, it’s news to me.”
“Oh.”
This is Tuesday, and his windshield is frozen over. I wonder how long it has been since that happened?
I grew up in Tennessee. It snows there a little more frequently than in south Alabama, but a snow day and a thin covering of fluffy white on the ground were still things to be excited about growing up.
When I was little, we had a sled but no noticeable hill to go flying down. No, our sled traveled by manpower. On those two or three days a year when we had decent snow accumulation, my mom or dad would drag us kids around the yard, bumpity bumpity with the snow crackling under the runners.
One year the snow was quite dry, but my brother and I desperately wanted to build snowman. Mama and Daddy pulled the big outdoor garbage can out of the garage and packed it full of snow before upending it near the road in our front yard. It actually worked pretty well. We brought him to life and dressed him up with one of those storebought kits.
I seem to recall his cheap plastic hat didn’t fit so well – we had to add an extra little mound of snow on top of his head to try to coax it to stay in place – but not everyone can find a magic hat that makes their snowman dance and say happy birthday.
I remember in high school when an unexpected light snowfall drove everyone to the windows to watch it accumulate in the landscaping and pray for the announcement that we would get to go home early.
I was in my yearbook staff class. We had a foreign exchange student in our class that year – a sweet girl from Russia. She gave me the most bemused expression and said something along the lines of, “In Russia we get a foot of snow and nobody even pays any attention. Here it barely snows at all and people start talking about leaving school early.”
Yup. Just the threat of snow throws us Southerners into a flurry (haha) of panic.
Monday night I realized with a sinking feeling that – wouldn’t you know it? – we were legitimately out of bread and milk. Shaking my head at the cliche I was helping to bolster, I headed to Kroger to purchase those necessities for the coming snowpocalypse – or snowmageddon, whatever might be your preference.
Thankfully Kroger still had plenty of 2{44c616e11cf70d617c8dd92fb0bc15f41001df771f775c6b004238009c89a3f0} and thinly-sliced Sunbeam, so in the event ice should rip down all the power lines and a blizzard trap us in our duplex for the next two weeks, we should be all right.
In spite of my somewhat snarky attitude you might be picking up, I love the snow. I remember that good snow we had a few years ago in Auburn. I was still in college, and a bunch of us got together to roll up a snowman and have a snowball fight.
I had friends who didn’t even realize you actually could roll up a snowman. “Wow,” they said. “Just like on T.V.”
If you’re reading this column today, it probably means we made it through the snowpocalypsemageddon. I hope you stayed warm and safe – and figured out something to do with your year’s supply of milk and bread.
Alison James, associate editor for the “Opelika Observer,” has loved to read and write since she was 5 years old. She loves meeting new people and telling their stories.