Bah! Snow turns the world into crippled guppies sliding around

By David Baker

December 3, 2007 | I am of a desert people.

The situation being what it is, snow is foreign, strange and frightening to me. So I deal with my unfamiliarity with the snow in the same way most Western minds deal with things that are strange -- I build up a blind hatred and condemn them without any knowledge or context, cultivating an impossibly irrational paradigm regarding all things white and powdery. This also explains why powdered sugar simply is never an option.

One would think that time would allow me to adapt to my new climate. I've been in Logan going on four years now, but something so deep-seated takes much longer to pry loose. Maybe this is the proof churchy nutcases need to prove that Darwin was a damn drunk, habitual liar and possibly even a Scientologist. I'd bet my lack of adaptation has more to do with piles of blankets and constrictive bundles of clothes, though.

Those are all just excuses and half explanations.

The truth: I hate the snow. It's an inconvenience, like sitting next to a very obese person on a roller-coaster and only getting one click on your shared restraining bar -- the one that keeps you from plunging headlong into a certain, horrifying bug-into-a-windshield death.

Snow turns the world into crippled guppies sliding around haphazardly. I love walking like a drunken penguin with an iceberg shoved up its ass -- I find it to be an extremely rewarding experience.

Usually I can stroll around in a normal confident manner, but in the snow and ice my gait turns into tentative, stiff-legged meandering not conducive to any sort of proper first impression.

Maybe that's why it's so hard to hook up in the winter. I think girls have some sort of intrinsic ability to see a man's walk and immediately judge whether any sort of coital encounter will follow. They are more likely to go home with a shoulders-back, head-up, slightly bouncy walk of confidence than a robotic, equilibriumless jackass careening into them on a sheet of ice -- or worse, losing their footing, getting parallel to the ground and landing with an empty thud on the frozen pavement.

"Are you all right?" she'd ask.

Aha, let her take care of me, the Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman syndrome -- that doesn't sound right, but we'll go with that. She'll fall for me for sure (corniness completely intentional).

But blinded by icy rage, this comes out, "Hell no. Are you kidding me? Are you wearing ice skates or something? How do you stay upright?"

"Sorry," she'd say, walking out of my life forever.

Luckily, I've been preparing myself for these sorts of falls. During the autumn, I spent hours on end stealing -- in the stealthiest, ninja-like manner -- a cache of youth football pads from local recreation leagues. So now, I have a single-bar-face-mask helmet, about 20-some tailbone pads and six pairs of junior shoulder pads, size medium. I have my own jock strap and cup, those aren't really enticing as second-hand items, anyway.

There's nothing dorky or off-putting about a grown man walking to school with tiny shoulder pads under his gray, zip-up hoodie, three layers of tailbone pads protecting his ass, and a faded orange helmet with a rotten yellow strap and a single, rusty metal bar bisecting his face. At least my strides are more confident now that I know I'm protected from slips and falls and blindside attacks by blitzing safeties.

Nothing can protect me from the constant bombardment of snow-welcoming sentiment dribbling like a radioactive leak from the mouths of powder-brained snowfreaks, making my once happy existence into a vengeful mutant bent on the destruction of all forms of winter love.

The constant mindless chatter of these people is like a never-ending rain of spit showered upon my floor-bound, jerking body -- the result of the initial kick to the groin from the day's snow. Why don't you just rub some more salt in my wounds? Let's even have a party celebrating the slow suction of my lifeforce out of my ears.

I don't mean to sound bitter.

Wait ... yes, I do.

Either way, I have no perspective. I just can't fathom the love these snowfreaks have for winter sports. Skiing and snowboarding seem like the most dangerous, irrational thing a person on massive amounts of mind-bending drugs could fathom to do for enjoyment.

Hurling one's self off a snow covered crag of rock, spotted with immovable trees -- with nothing between you and a freezing road burn but some really hard plastic slats polished to prime slipperiness -- seems too stupid even for my most drunken moments.

I honestly think I'd rather go into a cage with Chuck Liddell or enter a pie eating contest against Oprah Winfrey -- both equally impossible situations to emerge from with a win or any measurable amount of pride -- than try to conquer a snow covered mountain.

I suppose the only hope I have is to get a '72 Pontiac Firebird and drive it constantly while spraying two cans of Aqua Net into the air every block, and then put a coal-burning power plant in my backyard. Anything to speed up global warming.

Or maybe I could just move to California, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.

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