We went into yesterday girding our loins for a snowstorm that was supposed to be amongst the nastiest on record here in Atlanta. Many school systems — mine included, whee! — dismissed early, with visions of the five-day clusterfargo commonly known as “Snowpocalypse” dancing in their heads.
This is the part where Northerners smile and chuckle to themselves a little bit, because virtually the entire metro area of Atlanta — the city and its suburbs — was literally brought to its knees and locked down by about two inches of snow. We’re notoriously underequipped to handle winter weather down here. It’s just a thing we don’t bother to deal with; being prepared for a blizzard in Atlanta makes about as much sense as keeping an elephant gun on hand in case Bigfoot wanders through my backyard.
Still, snow is a thing we secretly get excited about in the South, though: kids and grown-ups alike. Sure, it shatters our infrastructure, but holy carp, we can make snowballs and listen to that foomp sound when we walk around and, most importantly, catch a day off from work and school.
Helena had been knocking on the door for several days. We had been warned to plan for being “snowed in” at least three days. We had been warned to clear the roads by four PM, to clear out before the ice starts to accumulate. Weather reports, even when the precipitation had barely started by four PM, called for anywhere from one to five inches of snow (though any guy will tell you, it ain’t about the measurement; it’s about what you can do with it).
Seven PM, still no snow.
Eight PM, still no snow.
Nine PM, still no snow.
It got to be 10 PM, which is bedtime even for the adults in our house, and we still hadn’t seen a flake. We checked the local news — reporters in their bulky winter coats dutifully stood outside in the drab rain, anticlimactically holding aloft sticks sheathed in ice to show us just how dangerous the roads could be, despite the total lack of any actual winter weather happening at all.
We went to sleep, dreaming that maybe the blizzard would strike while we slumbered, that the day would break and we’d have to reach for our coats and boots and hats to brave our front yard. But when we woke, it became clear that we’d been misled. (Sidenote: I learned recently that it’s actually pretty common to misread “misled” as mize-eld, the past participle of the non-existent verb “misle,” which of course means to trick or deceive. Especially if your only experience with the word is in print. This actually makes perfect sense, since English in general makes none.) The yard is, at most, highlighted with frosty tips like the spiky protrusions on the Backstreet Boys’ bed heads. The road looks like somebody spilled a particularly large salt-shaker across it. But there is no snow in Atlanta, and we’re all very sad.
The roads are still icy, though, so we all have the excuse we wanted to hunker down for the weekend and binge-watch Westworld. Except we already did that over the Christmas holiday. (So good!)
Despite all that build-up, our winter coats and mittens and hats will remain in the closet to gather dust, and we Atlantans will have to content ourselves with dreams of the white stuff.
This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.
Accidentally Inspired 