Ah, winter-time. The time when kids get a stolen non-school day and relish the time spent with their family. Fathers are out shoveling the driveway and seemingly are in good cheer as their children happily toss pure white snowballs in the father’s general direction. Mother is inside preparing Hot Cocoa and preparing the dryer to receive the returning snow bunnies’ wet clothing. Oh I can just hear Bing Crosby singing something with his dulcet tones.
Well, okay, Norman Rockwell is dead, and perhaps the only semblance of the bygone family perception lies within retro Coca-Cola commercials…you know, the ones with the cute cuddly polar bear family sharing a Coke…the one where they cut the cameral feed shortly before the bears drop the Coke and disembowel the camera crew for food? Well, this is the 2012 people. Welcome to reality.
It snowed in Northern Virginia (my home) recently. Not Montana Snow, where it doesn’t count as a snow event unless there is a legitimate Woolly Mammoth sighting. It snowed about a foot and people lost their minds. People were abandoning their cars; even while they were parked inside a garage. Mothers were handing babies out of windows to snow plow drivers and telling them to take their baby to safety and raise them right. People raided stores and bought everything…everything people! Not just all canned goods and toilet paper off the shelves, but even the shelves themselves…presumably for a time when metal shelves become currency in the new Ice Age.
Admittedly I was no better. I was out shoveling the driveway and cursing all known and even some unknown deities and vowing to move to a place where there is no snow…Hell presumably. Now, I have a bad back…which is saying quite a bit as I don’t have a good front, top, bottom or middle either. So every time I shoveled a large helping of snow, I stood there waiting for a pop; not entirely dissimilar to WWII submarine crews waiting for a depth charge to explode.
Luckily, nothing happened and I remain unhurt. My main question to everyone is have we changed so much as a society that an inch or two of snow can bring about conditions similar to the Donner Party?
Until next time,
Be Good Or Be Good At It!
Be Good or Be Good At It! 
