I Hate the Snow

It’s true.  For a guy that makes part of his living on snow, it’s probably a bad thing to say, but there it is.  There is a 100% chance of snow today, and yes, they got this one right.  That’s a picture or our backyard and yes, that is a fence made primarily of skis, but I still hate snow.  I remember loving it as a kid and also again when my own kids were small.  The difference was, we’d go out and play in it.  I could do that for hours. 

When I was a kid we played a game called “Fox and Geese”.  My sisters taught me this game.  I was the youngest.  They would go into the back yard and pound out random paths in the snow.  Then whoever was the fox would chase the geese around, but you couldn’t leave the path to get away.  The trails would intersect at various points.  As I recall I was IT – the fox – a lot of the time.  That’s what the short legs of childhood bring you.  It was tons of fun. 

Another snow game was sliding down our sloped driveway on our feet.  My house was the destination for this because we had the best slope.  No one ever broke their wrists before wrist guards or got traumatic brain injuries before there were helmets.  Relatedly, I never heard of anyone dying in a car crash before the advent of seatbelts either.  Since safety equipment has become available injuries have increased dramatically.  I might be wrong about the order of things….anyway, I digress.  What were we talking about?  Oh yes, sliding on our shoes down the driveway. 

Since winter shoes had some tread, this couldn’t be done in your going-to-school-shoes.  No, you had to get on your “Sunday shoes”.  The order of this was critical as well.  You couldn’t even attempt to slide on the drive way with treaded shoes or the surface would be messed up and you’d have to wait for the next storm.  Nope, before any attempt to slide you had to have on your Sunday shoes.  There was a code and we were all compelled, in the name of fun, to live by it.  Sliding down the driveway worked best with just a light dusting on the driveway.  With that it was slick enough to keep you going and create a packed snow and ice sheet that you could slide down again and again.  In deeper snow I’d slide on the road too, like while walking home from school.  For that it didn’t matter what kind of shoes you had, because you weren’t trying to preserve the surface.  But it was a fun way to get around.  I’d just take a few running steps and slide, left foot first.

Another winter “sport” which I never tried but has a name that I understand is common only to Utah is Hookybobbing.  This must be a local term because “Hookybobbing” is getting the red squiggle as I type this.  Hookybobbing, when done correctly, is accomplished by running up to a slow moving car, and grabbing on to the bumper,  and sliding on your feet as the car pulls you along.  I was always too scared to do this.  Again, back in those days, no one was ever injured doing it.  This stuff only became dangerous in the 80’s, I think.  The late 80’s.  Hookybobbing was done primarily by kids on their way home from church in our quiet little neighborhood – Sunday shoes.

As a father of small ones, I loved playing Fox and Geese in our own backyard.  The driveway slide we never adopted because my kids came along in the 90’s – after the injuries started.  But we did love going  to Eastmont Middle School’s west lawn for sledding.  Eastmont has a steep slope with a big landing area, perfect for sledding.  This was a great workout too, because there was always someone too small to pull their sled back up the hill.  At least, Amy, Lauren and Brady were good at convincing me that was the case.  I recall one day where due to conditions there was a “feature” that we couldn’t see.  “Feature” is what the snowboarders and freestyle skiers call things like jumps and rails in terrain parks.  This feature was a jump and Brady couldn’t wait to be the first one down the hill.  As you might expect, he took the feature.  There was a mid-air separation of Brady to sled and all I could think was, Oh crap, this is the new millennium, we’re well into the age of injury accidents and we don’t have helmets!”  It was a lot to think about in that moment, but the human brain is an incredible thing.  That’s why you should wear a helmet.  Brady was fine and thought he was the coolest guy in the world for taking that jump.

I guess snow CAN be fun.  Maybe I don’t hate it so much.  The key is to get out in it, not to worry about getting too cold or too wet, or sick (cold doesn’t cause sickness no matter what your grandma told you).  You’ll warm up.  You’ll dry off.  And you might just have some fun along the way.