a little snow never hurt anyone

Or did it? If you ask my kids, I have way too many "poor me-I grew up with too much snow" stories, but I did grow up where there was too much snow, at least for 5 very formative years of my life. We didn't always live in Southeastern PA, which gets minimal to moderate snowfall, or did before all this crazy warming started, but I digress. When I was in second grade, my very Brooklyn parents took my sister and I to the northern part of NY state, Albany to be exact. My first memory of our new home was looking for houses on my birthday and having to go to Sears to buy a Winter coat because it was SNOWING ON MY BIRTHDAY (May 6!).

So, fast forward several years later and we have all gotten as accustomed as possible to living in the land of snow. At this point, I owned long underwear, legwarmers and wore snow pants to school under my uniform skirt-that was a great look. We also used to sneak our saddle shoes out to recess in the armpits of our heavy coats. Once past the nuns' watchful eyes, we would pull off our boots, slip on the traction-less saddle shoes and basically ice skate on the front lawn of the school. Oh, and my neighbor down the street used to keep an ice rink of sorts for us in his side yard-he would use the garden hose every night to keep it going.

So, my snow story. I was about 9 and unlike my oldest daughter, was short. Our front yard was of course covered in about 4-5 feet of snow-as it would be till spring. The snow had an icy crust that you could walk on (do you see where this is going yet?). The lawn was actually a hill leading up to our house, but from the porch, with all the snow drifts, it was a straight shot out to the street and then about a 10 foot drop to the ground.

I decided to walk across the icy snow to go to the mailbox and about halfway there, hit a soft spot and fell in. Yes, I fell into the snow, with just my hand reaching up above me. If you ask my parents, I wasn't out there very long, but if you ask me it was just about a minute short of hypothermia. The only thing more horrifying and humiliating than being wedged into a snowbank for probably hours was listening to your parents and older sister laughing hysterically while they try to shovel toward you from the street!


so, my kids can have their Pennsylvania snow; I've had my fill. Occasionally, I will participate in a snowball fight and our whole family did walk a mile through the fresh snow to get sandwiches the other night. But, for the most part, I am counting till spring.