Rant #2,483: Release Me

The snow is falling this morning in my neck of the woods.

It is coming down pretty heavy right now, and it is at least covering the cars and the grass.

But when I went out to get the newspaper, to me at least, it felt a bit too warm to sustain itself, and I will bet that most of this stuff ends up melting away as the day progresses.

I hate the snow, or at least I have hated the snow since I was an adult.

Sure, you can say that it is pretty when it comes down, in particular during this time of year, blanketing houses all lit up for the holidays and making it really feel like Christmas.

But as an adult, it has been my task to clean it up around the house and on the cars, and there is no worse chore than digging yourself out of the snow.

And now, with my physical condition, I can't do it anyway, so it makes it even more disturbing and disruptive that this stuff is waiting for me to clean it up, but I simply cannot do it.

As a kid, in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, we had a place near the first shopping mall in the development that, as a little kid, my friends and I would go to with our sleds to slide down from.

I remember that hundreds of kids would congregate there during snow days, and we would walk up the incline, find our place, put our sled down, and go! It was so much fun, and we got better at doing it the more we did it.

I wish I had a photo to show you all of this; it was really a magnificent sight.

However, I remember that one time, my gloved hand somehow got caught under the sled, and it ripped off my glove into pieces. That glove protected my hand, and I came out of it without a scratch.

Later, the configuration of the Rochdale Village landscape changed, and massive mountains were created near the school I went to, I.S. 72, that were perfectly made for older kids to sled down on.

The problem with going to those mountains is that not only could we slide down those hills and, because of the height of those hills, risk impending doom, but we also had to watch ourselves so that we wouldn't be jumped by others at those hills. Whoever had the idea of building those massive hills did not have the foresight to realize that they were simply breeding grounds for trouble, and by that point in my life--12 or 13 years old or so--sledding wasn't that much fun anymore, anyway, and to risk my life and limb in doing it when it snowed just wasn't in the cards for me.

When we moved to Long Island, the happy experience with snow was over for good the first time I had to shovel the walks around the house and dig the cars out of the white muck. Digging, digging and digging some more just wasn't F-U-N, it was a necessity to get us ready to work or at least move around and not be couch potatoes.

No, no more sledding for me ... although, I do remember that when my son was young, I did take him sledding on occasion, and I think I did the same thing for my daughter, but that is as close to fun as I ever again had with snow.

Now, it is simply drudgery.

I don't think today's snow is going to be that bad. I will just have to clean off my car and get ready to take my son to work and do a few chores that I have lined up for myself.

But F-U-N? Nope, those days are over, and over for good.

Maybe if I am ever able to have grandchildren, the fun aspect will return, but since I don't see that happening, I just wish the snow would leave me the hell alone.