I'm cold.
No, this isn't a general complaint about New England
winter. This is a specific lament. You see, my son's lacrosse coach has turned
into a crackerjack meteorologist, and it's starting to get a little
creepy. And cold.
Coach schedules two scrimmages for last Saturday. Unfortunately, it decides to snow. Coach reschedules the scrimmages for Tuesday
afternoon. Unfortunately, it decides to
snow. Coach reschedules again for
Wednesday evening. Just as I am leaving
the house to drive to the game, I get an email and a phone call -- Scrimmage
cancelled due to … you guessed it: Snow.
Coach tries one more time with Thursday evening. After all, Thursday is what the weather
experts have been calling "the pick of the week." It's in the 40's, about 30 degrees warmer
than it has been lately, and it's a beautiful pre-spring afternoon and early
evening. The game starts, we all comment
about how warm it is, and it appears
that tonight just maybe Mother Nature won't shit all over us.
Until half-time. At
half-time, Mother Nature shits all over us.
With sudden ferocity the temperature drops markedly. The Arctic wind kicks up and barrels across
the field. Then the rain comes. It's a fine mist at first, then a steady
drizzle, then giant, ice-laced, stinging daggers of wetness. The pounding droplets and the raging wind
render all umbrellas useless, almost comical.
By the time the second half of the game starts, we are all well on our
way to being soaked through. I see my
son's girlfriend, who has given up and is returning to her dorm. She is a far, far brighter girl than we
adults; she has the good sense to get out of the freezing rain.
For some reason, tonight the four referees, who must be in
training because they throw flags and blow whistles without consistency or
agreement, cannot allow the game to go more than forty seconds without
stop-time. We know this because we
start keeping track. The last quarter
of the game, scheduled for fifteen minutes, stretches twice that long. The last five minutes alone take up almost
half of that extended time. By now it
is snowing big, fat, juicy, icy snowflakes, and the wind blows them directly
into our faces. I am quite sure that any
eye make-up I put on earlier is now melting down my face and freezing into
bizarre black icicles along my cheekbones.
(After a mirror check before leaving the parking lot, this new look is
confirmed.)
I am somewhat concerned about driving home since it has been
snow-sleeting for an hour already, but I know New Hampshire takes great care of
their roads, especially their highways, during adverse weather conditions. I lived in New Hampshire for a long
time. I even lived there several times. These are facts I know. During and right after storms, it's fun to
drive north and see exactly where the plowing line stops -- it's at the state
line: New Hampshire roads are pristine while Massachusetts roads are clogged
with snow banks, slush, and general gunk.
Until Saturday and again Thursday.
On Saturday, after it has been snowing for three hours, no
plows come by and I watch a car spin out into a snow bank while leaving my
daughter's new place in Londonderry. On
Thursday night, after it has been snowing for over an hour, no plows come by,
no lanes are visible on the snow-covered tar, and the snow is coming at the
windshield like hyperspace mode in Star
Wars. I am crawling along the interstate at paces
of twenty to forty miles per hour. I
think this lack of plowing is certainly the most dangerous thing I'll see, but
I will be wrong.
The most dangerous thing I see happens around exit #5, which
means I still have a long way to go before I'm home safely. Around exit #5, two tractor-trailers come
barreling by on the left to pass the slower line of cars. The problem is the person driving in front of
me cannot see his lane and probably assumes that all is well as he drifts
nonchalantly into the left lane… where there is a tractor-trailer whizzing by.
The car does what basically amounts to a movie stunt -- It
slides partially under the eighteen-wheeler, both vehicles decelerate slightly,
and the little car in front of me slides back without incident as both vehicles
continue down the road.
I, on the other hand, shit my pants.
I am still driving along, but now one palm is tightly fisted
on the steering wheel while the other covers my mouth to stifle a
blood-curdling scream. I take my foot
off the gas, pump the brakes, and start praying to any and every god in the
universe. I swear this is the truth
exactly as it happens. Well, maybe not
the scream part because that was actually a sharp inhalation of breath followed
by a silent, gaping, mock scream. It is
the kind of scream that one might see in a death masque. Everything else I am telling you is the
honest real way it happened. The car
slipped under a bit, rode that way for a fraction of a second, then slipped
back out again.
It takes me over an hour to drive the thirty-five or so
miles that it is from the university to my driveway. I decide that going slowly but steadily is
the way for me. It isn't until I hit the
Massachusetts state border that the snow has returned to sleet and the roads
are passable, a bit slippery, but nothing like the untreated, unplowed,
unsalted, and unsanded roads of its northern cousin state.
When I finally get home, I peel off the layers of dripping
wet clothing. My skin underneath and
especially my calves are bright red and very cold to the touch. I am frozen like an ice cube, colder than I
have been for a long time. So cold, in
fact, that I am starting to hallucinate about Walt Disney -- as he is now,
stuck in liquid nitrogen-fueled, frozen suspended animation.
But I am home. I'm
cold, but I'm home. Now if you'll excuse
me, I'm going to stand on the heating vent and thaw out. By the way:
NEXT LACROSSE SCRIMMAGE IS SCHEDULED FOR SATURDAY MORNING. Plan your activities around the snow that
will surely be coming.
