First Snow

I just got back from this season's first foray out into the world with snow. I hold these truths to be self-evident that many of the people who buy SUVs and Subarus do so because they are told, or somehow otherwise believe, they are invincible or at least impervious to weather. Personally, Subaru should change their terrible ad slogan from "Love, it's what makes a Subaru a Subaru", to "Subaru, for people who like to hang upside down from their seat belts," because I see more of them upside down in a ditch from November to April than any other make. Let me tell you, they're actually more attractive that way.

I was being followed too closely by one this morning, and I turned my signal on way early to let this jive turkey know I wasn't accelerating too much because I had to slow back down again right up ahead. Did he back off? No! So I delayed slowing down as much as possible but he kept getting closer. I could not execute my turn into the drive and overshot it. I don't like being beat, so I merely aimed for the sidewalk adjacent to my intended target, swung around through the grass narrowly missing a very immobile electrical box and intersected my intended course. None of which would have happened if I weren't so damn concerned about the person in their Subaru behind me. It wasn't until after the fact, I remembered my car is invisible.

Were I driving my wife's car, a simple yank of the handbrake would have rotated my nose right where In wanted it to go. But I was going to work and therefore driving my car,which is a rear wheel drive tank that has a foot operated, er, handbrake, (Don't call it an emergency brake, the car makers will get all pissed at you). When I bought the car, I got a set of snow tires which lasted valiantly through 2 seasons. I got a new set of regular all season tires hoping they would be enough to do the trick in the snow. So far I have about as much confidence in them as I do in a submarine built by a kindergarten class.

It is forecast to be a very snowy winter which does not bode well for my and Large Marge, (yes, I name my cars). I don't know how I am going to keep the shiny side up without the aid of snow tires. I do a lot of driving. It's going to be a long winter.

It wasn't always like this. The year was 1995, the setting, Mt. Pleasant Michigan, somewhere near the campus of Central Michigan University. My former college roommate and current besty, Greg and I anxiously anticipated first snow. We decided to treatit like a holiday. There is a show on T.V. called Hometime that is similar to This Old House and they undertook a huge project and scratch built a log cabin. I say cabin, it was a home, a big ass gorgeous home on a nice piece of land in Minnesota. On something like 300 VHS cassettes, it chronicals the building of this house from design, to initial construction, (hand shaping and fitting the logs!), to deconstruction, shipping, reconstruction, chinking, (not my racist term, it's what the stuff between the logs is called that keeps the outside out and the inside in), and finally staining.

We followed this series while it was being broadcast originally and Greg, on a whim, called to order the whole kit and kaboodle at the end of the series. He never even pulled out his credit card, he knew the number by heart. Coincidentally, it arrived about the same time winter did. 'First Snow', the holiday was born.

We cut class, and um, how to say, got right, and watched that cabin being built from beginning to end, tape after tape after tape after tape. We stopped only to pee and get, um, right, again. We ate all sorts of noodles from bags and drank wine from a box and it was good. 'First Snow', we reasoned was the best holiday ever invented and we would hold it sacrosanct forever!

Until the next year. It got harder to cut class, because we were trying to master Statistics and grad level courses. Life had gotten so much bigger in the course of the ensuing year that, well, suffice it to say, we missed 'First Snow'.

Poor little holiday, never got a chance to be annual. It was killed at inaugural, never having been given the chance to mature into ubiquity and finally become passe, like Sweetest Day. Sure, for a few years, we called each other and said "Hey, 'First Snow'." But it was never the same, like Neverland after Peter Pan had grown up and stopped coming back to play. Sure, it was there, but it was a shadow of its former glory.

Now, the wonderment of our made up holiday is but a faded memory that I have to convince myself was even true. Two promising young men decided to shed the shackles of the world to merely celebrate the passage of the seasons and the existence of nature for just one day. Those two promising young men grew up. One owns a business, the other has been consumed by one and neither finds a snow event a thing to celebrate. Growing up is a sad thing sometimes, even when life is good.

I don't know if you are reading this, Greg, but it's first snow. Sorry we missed it again. Maybe next year, eh?