Sliding through a winter wonderland
While I was out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday, I swear the residents of Cache Valley all made appointments with their doctors to stock up on their annual dose of stupid pills.
“Soimanoaf,” a common stupid pill, is actually a combination of every prescription drug with odd side effects. The labeled effects of these pills include, but are not limited to, nausea, irritability, poor judgment, dry mouth, dizziness, forgetfulness and the inability to drive in snow.
Aside from dry mouth, there is no other way to describe the chaotic mania I’ve seen as normally sane people try really hard to outdo everyone else’s moronic behavior. And it always involves the arrival of the first frozen precipitation of the season.
Yes, in Utah it snows – a lot!
Even low-IQ folks that I affectionately describe as “a couple fries short of a Happy Meal” can figure this out.
However, from what I’ve witnessed, nothing screams “winter is here” like wearing stiletto heels in the snow. Yes, you have to give it up to those girls who, out of all the shoes in their closet, decide that high heels would provide adequate traction when ascending Old Main hill.
This yearly performance of “Aggies on Ice” runs for about a week, or until the grounds crew finally gets around to salting the walkways.
The ice skating spectacle coincides with the annual “Less is more” clothing competition. While most people bundle up in various forms of Gore-Tex and animal skins, inevitably a few odd fellows, with brains the size of cashews, will meander around campus in shorts and a T-shirt.
They’re very similar to the crazy, half-dressed, painted, drunk fat guys who cheer raucously at frigid football games. Actually, upon closer inspection, these are those guys, and they finally put on a shirt – Woohoo!
The winner of the clothing competition usually ends up being one of those short-short jogging dudes. They amazingly continue running through the cold and wet as if it were just a mild inconvenience. I’ve never been especially excited or prepared to see pasty white thighs running by, and the change to a Smurf blue doesn’t help.
By far the dumbest statement I’ve recently heard locals say is, “It takes us one good snow for us to remember how to drive in winter weather.”
I may be from Virginia, but come on, that sounds like an excuse an UPS guy would use when your package arrives crumpled.
This will be my second winter of driving around the Logan area. Last year’s experience was so traumatic that I will never forget how to drive in bad weather. I remember it went something like this:
Waking up to the rough scraping sound of metal on concrete outside my bedroom signifies the advent of a snowy day. At this point, I have the option to either:
1) Put earplugs in and go back to bed or
2) Put earplugs in and sleep on the couch.
With the obscene power of my wife’s mental nudgings while still sleeping, I decided, however, that I should go to work.
After cumbersomely clearing the snow off my car, I roll 5 feet out of my parking space and get stuck in a snow bank. I should have stayed there.
Driving on snow wouldn’t be all that bad if no one else was out on the roads. It’s not easy dodging cars that are sliding around because people forgot to clear the snow of the top of their car. When it all suddenly comes down on the windshield, they lose control and drive into a ditch or a tree, or hopefully one of those blue short-short jogging dudes.
As if they were celebrating opposite day, these morons fail to heed the warnings of trained professionals who are also conveniently stuck in ditch on the side of the road.
Maybe next year will be different and people will have learned something. Not bloody likely.
Skillfully, I finally make it four-fifths of the way to work when I suddenly realize that I forgot to bring my lunch. &@##%&!
Someone must have slipped a stupid pill into my breakfast.
Garrett Wheeler is a second bachelor’s student in technical theatre design. Send any comments or column ideas to wheel@cc.usu.edu.