Snow: O the Humanity of it All!

What happens when tiny, freezing, white dainties fall from the sky? Everyone feels free license to squeal with delight and run in it like children, yelling and frolicking-they catch it in their wide open mouths, they smush it together into mounds and bean one another square in the face with it, they lay down and flap their arms and legs in it on the ground, and they meticulously roll it into great heaps and create tiny human-likenesses accented by sticks and other mushy debris.

And you know, those balls hurt! And your hands get red and needle-numb! And it gets in your clothes and rolls, icy and quick, down your pants and back! But it's snow, come on!





I love it. I love the snow! Not because I'm from a region of the country where real, bonefied snow is about as rare as a cyclone in the mediterranean, but because of its power. The power of snow that generates community among humans, no matter what. Sort of like death and taxes-SNOW: the great equalizer. Everyone has to bundle up, put on gloves, drive carefully or not at all. Everyone feels the irrestible urge to gaze intently at the stuff as if floats and flutters to the ground and then the luscious desire to snuggle into a warm place and simply be as the snow falls. Not that everyone gets to just be, but everyone would certainly like to. We all are human: we all get cold.





I mean, not many things have this power-at least not very many positive things. Things like famine of war or disasters certainly breed this sense of humanity among people-but what about good things that seed such commradery? Snow...free money?...I'm at a loss here for any more examples.





But think of the power of these things, these "universally" good things. They are wonderful things! I hesitate to mention their use in advertising, considering my hatred of the exploitation of good things which happens all the time. But still, snow-there's something great for humanity there, there really is.





And then, of course, it melts.