Snow is bad. No good. Downright evil.

I used to like snow. When I was a kid.

We had huge snowfalls. Ten, twelve feet at a time. Perfect for making igloos and snow forts stocked with snowballs dunked in water and left to freeze. Snow was for jumping on your Flexible Flyer and streaking down the hill on Squantum Street until you ran into a parked car. Red blood looks really cool on white snow.

Snow – back then – was for no school and neighborhood kids rolling snowmen into existence, and making snow angels, and trying to get one of the kids to lick the pole of the street sign to see if his tongue would stick.

Snow was good. Back then.

But now…

Snow is bad. No good. Downright evil.

Snow is that white stuff you shovel until your back screams out in pain or you have a heart attack and die. Snow is the reason there’s not a loaf of bread or gallon of milk on the store shelves. Snow is why Southerners crash into each other because they think the way to get the car unstuck is to push the accelerator all the way to the floor and the way to stop is by slamming on the brakes. Snow is why you can’t play golf, although I once tried until my twenty foot putt rolled into a snowball and fell over sideways eight feet from the hole. I took a three.

Some say snow is great for skiing but I say skiing sucks too. A friend of mine once told what he claimed was a true story. I believe him.

A married couple was about to get on the chair lift at a certain mountain when the wife said she had to go pee. The husband, concerned about losing their place in line, said there’d probably be a bathroom at the top. He was wrong.

But she REALLY had to go. And there was a clump of scrub pines nearby. So she skis over behind the bushes and pulls down her ski pants. But just as she starts to go, her skis start to slide. Suddenly, she is going down the mountain. Backwards. With her pants around her ankles.

Realizing the only way to not die is to crashland the woman leans right and cartwheels into a snowbank. The Ski Patrol comes to rescue her. She is alive but has broken her leg.

Hours later and back from the hospital with her leg in a cast, she is sitting in front of a crackling fire in the ski lodge. Just then she hears a “thump”, “thump”, “thump” out on the porch. The door swings open and in limps another skier. He is wearing a big leg cast.

“You too, huh?” she asks. “Yeah,” says the man.

“What happened?” she inquires.

“Ma’am, I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I was having a great time skiing down the run when all of a sudden this bare-ass lady goes streaking by me – backwards…”

Skiing sucks.

Snow is bad. No good. Downright evil.

I am opposed to it.