We're going to get 3 inches of snow tomorrow, apparently. New England's gotten tons of snow throughout the centuries. We've been buried in snow. When I was growing up in the 60's it snowed, maybe more than it snows nowadays. I remember building snow forts by scooping and shoveling out the snow mounded high at the end of the driveway from the snow plows passing by and Dad shoveling snow from the driveway. We had two or three separate entrances and room for two of us at least to huddle inside the fort at a time with a stash of snowballs besides. My parents never went into a blind hoarding panic when a snowstorm was announced on TV. We didn't have worse-case scenario adrenalin junkie meteorologists feeding into a diabolically concocted doomsday tale of devastation and starvation, power outages and the need for special ops survivalist skills when I was growing up. If the power went out, we wrapped ourselves in flannel blankets and carried on by the light of an oil lamp belonging to my great-grandmother. We sat around the kitchen table and played a homemade version of Parcheesi and went to bed early when we got bored. We had tuna fish sandwiches because there was always bread and cans of tuna in the house with three kids. The power usually came back on in a couple of hours. We never starved, frozen to death, or went out of our minds because we lost contact with our circle of friends and relatives. Our phones usually still worked. We didn't have Comcast. We had Bell. We weren't glued to our cellphones with OCD fervidity. We didn't even have cellphones. We played cards and talked to one another, or Mom read to us by flashlight in the living room. We didn't go out of our minds or have anxiety attacks because we might have missed another ridiculous selfie posted by a famous-in-his-or-her-own-mind soul-sucking attention vampire. I don't think I even bothered to call any friends to see what they were doing during the power outage and storm. School only got cancelled if the snow was higher than the janitor's snow blower chute. We didn't have two hour delays. The buses came, Mom or Dad drove us in the car with snow tires on it or even chains if your family couldn't afford snow tires, or we walked to school in the snow because we had boots and were intelligent enough not to wear shorts, tank tops, and Crocs in the winter. We wore long pants, corduroys, sweaters, turtlenecks, and long johns under everything and the cold didn't bother us. We threw on a wool coat, a down filled coat, not a hoodie or flannel shirt. We were winter savvy even at a young age. End of story.
It is so absurd how people panic at the word snow these days. The town where I live has never been buried in snow and inaccessible. The plows come out, the roads get cleared, sanded and salted as needed and live continues on. So, what's with this insane rushing to the store like you're never going to eat again after we get two or three inches of snow? How many batteries do you really need? What have you actually got in your house that runs on batteries that your need to have more on hand is that dire? We have flashlights that still have last year's batteries in them, a couple clocks that run on AA cells, the smoke detectors got new 9vs in October. We don't have anything that burns in our house because we're allergic to wood smoke, so we're not going to be starting any fires. Candles aren't part of our lives either since the majority of them are scented, another source of allergy woes. The battery powered lantern still works. It's the only light we really need. We're not throwing a party during a power outage.
So, where did this insanity originate? It certainly didn't exist when I was growing up, when you had a radio and a TV set that got three channels fairly clearly and several fuzzier channels from CT and NY. No one I know ever starved to death in a little snowstorm. If you knew your elderly neighbor on a budget might not have food in the house you stomped through the snow and brought them something, then grabbed the snow shovel and cleared their driveway and walkways before going home to get your sled out and play for several hours until your wool mittens sagged on your now red cold hands, the wool covered in little ice balls that weighted the mitten down making them dangerous face lacerating weapons when swung at your pesky kid brother!
We are a generation of alarmists spoon-fed dramatic images on TV and the internet of out-of-context storms. We glut ourselves on this stuff which is not reality, it's cut and paste drama that could be several years old, the worst images gleaned from acres of footage shot. I don't even get the weather forecasters standing out in a blizzard saying "The snow's really coming down out here! The roads are slippery!" Well, DUH! Go inside, you idiot! All of us can see out of our windows, and we're a heck of a lot smarter than you, standing out there telling us stuff that is perfectly obvious to even the most clueless of people. It's not like we all haven't lived through a snowstorm before. You're not telling us anything new, but you're finding the worst of the storm and tweaking people's anxiety levels to higher notches...for what? They've already been out fighting the crowds in the grocery stores to get their loaf of bread, jug of milk, toilet paper, and batteries. The snow plows are going by their homes while you're standing out there in a blizzard yammering inanely about the obvious. Go home. Go back into the studio and stop being so stupid.
I used to like winter. I used to look forward to snowstorms- watching the flakes tumble down. Now I dread snowstorms because of the inanity involved...this bizarre drive to prepare for what usually turns out to be a mere dusting of snow. All that running around, all that anxiety and stress, fueled by the media and over enthusiastic meteorologists (who get paid for being wrong about their ominous predictions), all that fuss for something New Englanders have lived with for generations. How did we become so afraid of snow when we have massive snowplows, savvy power company technicians that restore power within the hour or shortly thereafter? We have gas grills we can cook gourmet meals on. You can put perishables in a snow bank or a cooler packed with snow to preserve freshness. We have the means and the know hot to survive for up to eight hours or until the roads are clear, less than twelve hours normally. Walmart is open 24-hours. What's the big deal about a snowstorm in this day and age?
If we get some snow tonight, well, I'll be at work tomorrow because we seldom close. It'll be a nice drive in because with a couple of inches of snow and the roads plowed, sanded and salted, and school either cancelled or delayed by two hours, and many people opting to work from home there won't be many people on the roads. But, in my mind, I'll be wishing I could stay home so I can go outside to make snow angels in the back yard and then come inside for some hot chocolate...snowstorms were so much simpler when I was young.
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