I Wish It Would Snow

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When I was in high school, my friend Suzy had a very special cassette player.  It had a unique feature that didn't mean it was an extra good player, but more likely that it was just particularly crap.  We discovered, while listening to one of the new albums she'd recorded onto cassette (I am not Wikipedia - if you were born after 1983, you can look up album and cassette player yourself...), that if there was nothing recorded on the 2nd side, you could play the blank side 2 and hear side 1 playing backwards.  In the belated wake of the frenzy over some Beatles songs that were reputed to foretell a grim future for Paul McCartney when played backwards, we thought it would be fun to do some experimenting on our own.  Supposedly, Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven also contained secret devilish messages when played backwards, so as she happened to have a copy of it handy, and as we were in her well-lit living room, her parents chatting in the kitchen nearby, the giant chicken in me was held at bay for a time and we recorded the song, flipped the tape over (Wikipedia, folks...), turned up the volume, and had a listen.  And we heard it say...

...I wish it would snow...

Seriously, we both heard it, clear as day.  And, unravelling in fits of laughter (uh, maybe hysterical relief on my part), we knew how ridiculous some of the claims of other people could be.

So, on a completely unrelated note...

...the birds have started to venture out of their nests, chirping at the crack of dawn, heralding the awakening bloom of the grass, the trees, the flowers...  A rabbit, white cotton tail bobbing along behind it, hopped through our yard yesterday, and the herons have begun to soar out of their nests in the nearby colony, landing on the lakes to hunt for fish.  The reports have started in the local newspapers of car accidents caused by sleepy deer venturing out of the woods and into the paths of oncoming traffic.

A beautiful spring we've been having here in the dead of winter.

And it kinda sucks.

I got Samantha a small sled two years ago, hoping to be able to take her out for some fun in the snow, but last winter brought the disappointment of snow neatly covered in a shiny layer of ice.  And this winter brings...nothing but a disappointed child, and a mother, disappointed that her child is disappointed.  At least I don't have to be bummed that I forgot to get Sammi a pair of snow pants this year, although her new snow boots will be in perfect condition to give away next. 

The mid-Atlantic region is a funny place for weather.  And the less snow we have, the more anxious I get since I've just recently heard that mild, calm winters will bring more tempestuous weather (ie. tornadoes) in the spring.  And last spring is certainly not one I'd like a repeat of, as far as that kind of weather went.  Hiding in the basement at 6am, driving home from work with one eye on the swirly black clouds behind me and the other on the swirly black clouds with the bolts of lightning coming down in front of me, moving ever closer to home, worrying about the unpredictability of nature...

I definitely wish it would snow.