Anticipating this week’s winter storm it got me to thinking about when I was kid and how much I looked forward to the snow.
If it snowed enough, that meant we would be out of school. Along with the other kids in our neighborhood we could make snowmen, go sledding, have all kinds of fun.
Our grandson Liam spent most of last weekend with us. When he heard it was going to snow this week he told my wife Pat, who he calls Gigi, that he was going to build a snowman.
Pat wondered Tuesday morning how much snow they got in Norman and whether Liam, along with his parents Meghan and Terry would be able to build a snowman.
Some places for sure across the state got plenty of snow Monday and early Tuesday. But here in Shawnee we sure didn’t get enough of the white stuff to build Frosty.
I had to go outside early Tuesday morning to get something done and was bundled up with everything I possibly could get on to weather the freezing temperatures and the brutal wind chills that were in the teens.
Funny, how when I was a kid, even in my teens, this kind of weather didn’t bother me much.
Nowadays, that’s completely different. I dread having to go out in this kind of weather. I just don’t enjoy the cold. I don’t mind looking at the snow from inside my house, but it doesn’t seem fun anymore like it did when I was a kid who looked forward to playing and sledding in it.
I concern myself more today with hoping I don’t have to be out in it for a long period of time and if it’s snowed very much having to drive around in it.
When I was in my garage this morning looking outside before having to brave it, I remembered actually having to go quail hunting with my dad in this kind of weather when we had our first Brittany.
If dad could drive and get to a hunting place about 40 miles from our house at our cousin’s place, you could bet that we were going. I can remember how miserably cold I would get and ask myself, “now why are we doing this”?
Of course back then, we could only hunt on certain days and the quail season wasn’t nearly as long as it is now.
Today, I’m not about to venture out just to hunt quail in this kind of weather.
But, I did survive those days and learned at least one thing I no longer need to do that anymore.