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You Can't Build A Very Big Snowman With Bare Feet

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By MARK RUTLEDGE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 24, 2009

A year has passed since I shared in this space how my children suffer from a condition known as "slow snow recognition." Recent winter storms that blanketed the Southeast, I'm happy to report, have cured my three young daughters of that malady.

The mere sight of heavy frost - a relative rarity in the flatlands of eastern North Carolina - can cause children with slow snow recognition to jump and squeal uncontrollably.

Once they realize the ground covering is not the type that will support sledding, these children often sink into a sad and teary state of depression.

It's a cruel existence.

When the real thing finally turns their balmy little world into an ankle-deep winter wonderland, snow-deprived children understandably overreact.

One of my very best friends, Paul Lockhart, was snow-deprived when we met during the early 1970s. The first dusting of snow after Paul's family moved from New Orleans to our east Tennessee neighborhood nearly caused Paul's head to explode.

Think of the scene in the movie "Elf" when Buddy (Will Ferrell) runs around and around screaming during his first experience with a New York City revolving door. That was less excitement than Paul displayed every time flakes fell from the sky during his first winter of mountain living.

A year ago this week, when my girls heard their cousins were sledding down the hills at Grandma Rutledge's Tennessee farm, nothing could console them short of packing up the van and driving west. But a wave of warm air from the south melted their fragile little hopes and dreams before we could get there.

This year - specifically last Monday morning - things worked out better. Christmas didn't hold a candle to the joy with which my daughters jumped and shouted at the sight of a freshly whitened landscape outside Grandma's windows.

"Is that snow?" 6-year-old Julia squealed, exhibiting the last remnant of slow snow recognition before the antidote took effect.

Tragically, we had to head back home that afternoon to North Carolina, where a winter storm was actually predicted. But before leaving all that glorious snow at Grandma's, we crammed in as many sled rides and snow angels as was humanly possible.

By the time the frozen precipitation began piling up in eastern North Carolina on Tuesday, I was over the urge to play in it. Try explaining that to an 8-year-old with one morning of sledding in her bank of wintertime experiences.

I came home from work well after dark and put on my pajamas, thinking that might save me. But my oldest pajama-clad daughter insisted we put on our coats and go out for just one more romp in the snow before bedtime.

"If only we hadn't already taken our shoes off," I shrugged.

"I'll do it barefoot," she grinned, "if you will."

Never accept a dare like that from a snow-deprived child. Next thing I knew, we were yelling and screaming and high stepping three times around the front yard.

You'd have to be a giant elf in New York City to have more fun that that.

Mark Rutledge writes for The Daily Reflector in Greenville, N.C.

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