We’ve
gotten a lot of snow this winter here in the Northeast. The way people have
been talking, you’d think we’ve been getting two to three storms per week,
though if I really think back, that has happened only a couple of times. People
I know, and even some I don’t know, have complained to me about the snow. It
seems that a lot of people are sick and tired of the snow.
We
haven’t really gotten that much snow the last couple of winters so maybe people
are out of practice when it comes to winter, but come on, we live in the
Northeast and it’s winter! It’s going to snow and it’s not always going to be
at a convenient time. I get it to a certain point; you have to clear the
walkway and the driveway, you have to clean off the cars, and then you have to
drive to or from work in a snowy mess. It’s not all fun and games as an adult
like it was when we were kids.
It
seems to me that we used to get more snow when I was growing up than we do now.
I don’t remember many winters where there wasn’t a decent amount of snow or
when we weren’t able to be skating on the ponds. That was just part of growing
up – or was it? I looked back and found a website
that listed the annual snowfall in Boston, MA by month. Covering the years from
when I can actually remember things up through high school, this is what I
found:
Season Total (inches)
1966-67 60.1
1967-68 44.8
1968-69 53.8
1969-70 48.8
1970-71 57.3
1971-72 47.5
1972-73 10.3
1973-74 36.9
1974-75 27.6
1975-76 46.6
1976-77 58.5
1977-78 85.1
1978-79 27.5
Throw out 1972-73 as an outlier (what happened that year?)
and 1977-78 (“The Blizzard of 1978”
skewed those numbers) and we’ve averaged 46.3 inches per season. This season
we’ve gotten 42 inches, so I’d say we’re pretty much average this year. Maybe
some whiners around here need to get out and do some fun stuff in the snow
instead of cursing their very life for living where it snows. Maybe the adults
need to go back to their childhood and have some fun.
Winter
didn’t stop us from going outside and having fun when we were growing up. We
went skating, we went sledding, and we built snow forts and had snowball fights.
We played Alaska, a game where we pretended we were in Alaska, caught in some
huge blizzard, and we had to rescue someone. We made noises that we thought
sounded like the wind, we threw snow up in the air to make it be like it was
snowing out of control. We pretended we were rolling down the side of a
mountain or, gasp, falling over the side of a cliff! Lucky for us, we had our
buddies with us to keep us from plunging to our deaths.
We
didn’t complain about the snow, that’s for sure. The more the better as far as
we were concerned. It gave us more choices of what to do. And that’s what it
comes down to for all the people who’ve been whining about the snow – choice.
You can choose to see the negative (clearing the driveway, cleaning off the
cars, driving in the snow) or you can choose to see the positive (the beauty of
the bushes, trees, and lawns coated in white, sledding, skiing). I’m choosing
to let my inner (winter) child enjoy the snow.
