I am a California boy. Born and bred here in paradise I can count on both hands the number of times that I have been in the snow. If you search through the archives you’ll find the post that in which I shared that I have never driven a car in the snow. Been a passenger, walked through it, but never been the driver.
As a point of interest some of those experiences in the snow have been in Buffalo and Toronto. It was pretty damn cold. Cold enough that I got the general idea for what it must be like to be snowbound which is part of why I have never wanted to torture myself by being forced to live that way on a regular basis.
It occurs to me one of the reasons that I haven’t really ever gotten into the holiday season is that I don’t really relate to all of the winter imagery. When people talk about how hard it was to shovel snow or walk through snowstorms on their way to school I smile and nod my head. I get the general drift. It is wet, cold and uncomfortable. I get it. Walked and driven through plenty of rainstorms.
Anyhoo, this past Thanksgiving marked 19 years since I spent my first and only Thanksgiving in the snow. As I sit here typing I am trying to recall how it was that I ended up in Georgetown for the holiday. Ok, that is not entirely true, I more or less remember. A good friend of mine went to school there. What I don’t remember is how we came up with the plan for me to go out there for Thanksgiving.
What I can tell you is that we were joined by two other friends. They went to Vassar and so they flew in from Poughkeepsie. Ok, so there were four of us. Four friends there for the holiday. Four friends ready to enjoy each other’s company, but only three of us were really equipped for snow. Can you guess who didn’t have snow gear.
Ok, there really wasn’t much snow. But for a kid from Los Angeles it was different to wander down the street and worry about slipping on the ice. It felt a bit like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
Over the years the Shmata Queen has told me all sorts of stories about how people hate L.A. and or make fun of it. I think that she was surprised when I told her that my experience had been very different. I can’t tell you how many times people have found out that I live in L.A. and asked me all sorts of crazy questions about what life is like here. Do I know ever see any actors, is it really sunny all the time, how close do I live to the beach, have I ever seen any shows being filmed.
Before the wacky woman inserts her two cents let me say that I have had people make disparaging remarks about L.A. in front of me, but it has happened relatively few times. More often than not I have gotten either the gushing or ambivalence. Either way, I don’t care. I have always liked it here. Truth is if more people left it’d be better, but I digress.
I’d write more, but I have a four year-old sitting on my lap. She just woke up and has found that tugging on my beard is an effective way of getting my attention. They say turnabout is fair play, so I grabbed her pony tail. Did I ever tell you that she is cute even when she looks at me with fire coming out of her eyes.
See you later.