Bob Collins
No matter how much we may love winter, this is the time of the year where even a moderate dumping of snow can send us over the edge.
It’s been a long time since a storm as — let’s face it — mediocre as Monday’s emptied the streets and sent people into panic mode. The usual inconvenience of a storm collided with the psychological impact of being sick of it. It happens; it’s March.
So we appreciate Dick Schwartz of Minneapolis who provides us with a miracle tonic to get us through the next few weeks via his op-ed in today’s Star Tribune in which he acknowledges that although he doesn’t always like winter, he’ll always love it anyway.
He left the state to sample different locales, returning to Minnesota in time for the Halloween blizzard of 1991.
I still watch with bemusement the recycled segments on TV news about how to avoid frostbite, shoveling safely or how to dress the kids “for the bus stop.”
I admit to feeling a kind of misplaced sense of victory when “we” break the record for snowfall or low temperature. I admit to just a bit of schadenfreude when a TV reporter snares a car owner for a sound-bite interview at the impound lot after a snow emergency. And I admit, I still tune in to WCCO on wintry mornings with a weird hope that my alma mater will be among the list of school closings. I’m thrilled when it’s announced and bummed when it isn’t.
It’s an odd an uneasy arrangement we have with winter. But I glanced at the web traffic statistics on Tuesday morning. Of the top 10 “stories”, eight were about a relatively average snowfall.
What’s that tell me? You don’t hate winter. You can’t get enough of it.
