Under a Blanket of Snow

First, let me congratulate former Hokie Michael Vick for taking what was supposed to be a "rebuilding year" and turning it into the Eagles first NFC East championship since 2006. Obviously the Philly fan in me is going nuts right now, but the Hokie in me loves to see Vick handle his adversity better than most players could.

Now to the real purpose of this story: the snow. People toss around words like "snowpocalypse" and "snowmageddon" and every other snow related doomsday reference they can think of when a heavy snowfall hits an area. For certain areas like the South where snow, at best, accumulates an inch or two, six inches seems like the end of the world. People rush to supermarkets and stock up with a ludicrous amount of food. The fact that this still happens in the Philadelphia area is a quandary to me. Despite just about every meteorologist calling for only about 24 hours of snow, people act as though they will be trapped in their houses for weeks. It's ludicrous. My area is getting about 8 inches of snow by the time this is all over and quite frankly that's not a lot.

I'm going to go way back right now, almost 15 years to be precise. I was seven years old, and my sister was four. Less than one week into 1996, a blizzard hit. I'm not talking four to eight inches. Nor am I talking about 10 to 15 inches. I'm talking about three feet of snow, at best. On top of the snow, swirling winds seemed never-ending as families were literally stuck in their houses for 72 hours. My front yard was worse than most. The wind seemed to keep adding snow from neighboring yards until we were buried under about four or five feet of snow. Where we had shoveled the driveway on the first day of snow was a mound about six feet high.

I was decked out from head to toe in a winter onesie that featured the four main colors of childhood: red, green, blue and yellow. I was wearing the kind of mittens that are attached by a string to my jacket, which was a good thing. I liked to take off my gloves and make snowballs to throw at my sister. Because the snow we had shoveled into a singular place next to the driveway, was packed down so well, it naturally seemed like a good place to essentially use as a slide. Since the slide on our backyard playset had been buried almost to the top by snow, this would have to do. It was a complete success. My sister and I had a ball taking turns climbing and then sliding down into the waiting arms of our father.

A few days after it ended, the area returned to normal (or at least normal enough) and life went on. The point of this story? This is not a blizzard. At best, it's a heavy snowfall. The world is not coming to an end. Revel in the snow, stay calm, and enjoy this time cooped up with friends or family.