There is no way around it, if you live in Michigan, it’s about to snow, like it or not, it will happen, all those people who say "oh it's so beautiful" are nuts, the snow and sludge and the flu are right around the corner.
This brings up the subject of my son and the designer $21 hat. My son has been begging for this hat, watching ebay auctions daily for this hat, but I simply could not handle paying that much money for a stupid hat, I don’t care what letters are on the side of it, or how cool it is, I’m not paying $21 for a hat. He won’t even wear a winter coat, but he must have the hat with so and so, what cha ma callit’s letters on the side, so grandma made sure to tell me to buy him that hat with the money she gave me to help pay for his school clothes.
When I was young, and it really snowed, not the small little pretend amount of snow we get today, I remember having to get up an extra half hour earlier, just so I’d have time to get dressed to go out in the snow to go to school. First, I had to put on two pairs of socks, not because I had bad socks, but because it’s cold out and that’s what we did one pair of regular white socks and then a pair of my dad’s itchy wool socks to “keep us warm”. Then we had “long-johns,” keep in mind this was before the advent of designer jeans, or even wearing jeans to school in the first place. After the long johns, we put on some lovely polyester pants that grandma sewed for us, and then crying and whining we’d hear “why didn’t we like the color, that’s just too bad, the material was on sale. So we shut up or we’ll have something to really cry about” and put on a shirt, then a sweater, then snow pants, then a jacket, then a scarf, and then of course a hat, no, not a cute hat, one that grandma crocheted. Next, with the balance of a world class ballerina, I'd slide across the kitchen floor to the cupboards and grab the bread bags, one for each foot, so on top of the two pairs of socks, one regular and one itchy kind, we slid our feet into the bread bags, then at last into our boots (One size too big so they'll fit for one more year).
Finally, sweating like fat men in a sauna, we put on our mittens (not gloves, “they don’t keep you warm”, mittens!) trying to hold on to my homework that slid right out of my mitten hands, we tromped through the snow and off to school. Stopping to throw snowballs at all the other kids forced to dress like some kind of crazy clown people, from a crazy clown person planet, my homework ended up a wet glob in my pocket and falling over, not once, or twice, but at least ten times on the way to school, which wasn’t even a whole 200 yards from my front door, was somewhat of a daily ritual. When I’d finally try to get up, my boots slipping and sliding on the ice, somehow, someway an elusive chunk of snow would find its way past the purple polyester pants, slide through the long johns, up and under and around, the snow pants (that were too big so they’d last more than one year) through the wonder bread logo under two layers of socks and freeze my toes. Now, I would have to stop, make a pile of snow to sit on, take off my mittens and the scarf around my face (because I was now sweating up a storm and couldn’t breathe), take off the offending boot, get the wonder bread bag off and take off the soaking wet socks, to get to that chunk of snow. Once I managed to get rid of the snow, I had to remain balanced as I hopped on one foot to catch the bread bag had taken flight and would most certainly get away. Then I'd go through the entire process of putting the wet socks on my wet freezing foot, put on the broken bag and get it just right so the wonder bread logo faced out, put on the boot, and make it go back under the snow pants and then of course find my hat. I lost it somehow amongst the drama of getting the snow out of my sock. I was sure to get frost bite if I hadn’t removed to gigantic chunk of snow from my sock, and then I’d have to go to the hospital and get my foot cut off. My mom said if I didn’t keep the bags on my feet the frost would bite them and they would get cut off.
Hearing the school bell I was well on my way to my first ulcer because I was so worried and I would have to face the fact that mom was not going to be happy that I lost another hat, she swore I threw them away, and that’s the whole reason I didn’t get store bought hats, because I’m just going to lose them anyway. As the school bell rang in the distance, I wasn’t even close to the door, the teacher would call my mom, and I would have to explain why, even though I left a half hour early to get to a location only 200 yards from my front door, how in the world, could I lose one piece of homework (the soaking wet blob in my pocket, that was once my spelling homework) and also be late. I must have been dawdling, I swore I wasn’t dawdling, I didn’t even know what dawdling was, how could I be doing it. Of course, my mom would never have understood the dramatic series of events that ended in a phone call from the teacher (the ultimate crime), and the paper that was eventually shredded into a million pieces in the dryer, what was supposed to do?
Occasionally my mom would attempt to crochet a hat herself, oh my goodness. I got to pick out the yarn, so I’d have the baby blue I wanted, but she, being the original type A personality (probably where I got it from), would crochet and take apart, and crochet and take apart the same hat so many times, that the yarn was just some sort of pieced together assembly of fringed string. I better wear that hat, after all the work she did making if for me because I wanted that baby blue, I better wear it and I better not lose it, or she’d give me something to really cry about.
Did grandma think of any of this when she plopped down $21 for the object of my son's desires, that designer hat, the one he had to have? I don’t think it even occurred to her, but the thing is, my kid loves that stupid hat, he wears it 24/7, I’m not kidding, it’s his favorite thing, if it gets lost I’m the one who will be hearing it and I’ll be the one in trouble for the hat getting lost. I guess some things just don’t change, but one thing I am sure of, never in a hundred years will we find a bread bag big enough for my son’s size 13 foot.
