I think I’m supposed to hate snow days.

After all, I’m a man – for starters. And not the fancy pants metro type, either.

I’m a man’s man who enjoys gridiron grit, hoisting a mug of mead with me’ mates and singing along to the rock opera Evita. Hey, two out of three is closer than most.

Secondly – I’m pushing 40 which means I likely hit my half-life somewhere around the time Lindsay Lohan first went before the judge. That’s got to be like 5 years and 40 sentences ago which means I am officially on the porch, staring out at my sunset years and just daring you kids to come fetch your ball from my yard.

All right. That’s probably a bit of hyperbole especially for those of you know me – who REALLY know me – and know that ‘not that deep down’, I’m just a goofy kid.

Sure, I pride myself on the ability to shift gears and wear whichever hat is required at the moment – meaning in the course of one day, I’ll be the doting Dad, the loyal worker, the loving husband, the caring friend, the dreamy hunk – whatever the day requires. But through all the years, I’ve tried to keep a good sense of humor and to lighten up no matter how complicated the stresses of the real world can tax our lives. I’ve never let go of that inner boy… the one who would wake before dawn and place the three local Boston television stations on heavy rotation to see who had the best prognosis for maximum snowfall.

And this was in the days before we enjoyed 652 channels and nothing on – meaning I had to physically hoist my ass from the couch and turn that dial over and over and over again – daring to wear out whatever fragile gears drove the television’s internal navigation – all in a bid to see where Channel 4 had dumped poor Shelby Scott this time. Modern HR would have had a field day with that chick and the horrific hostile work environments they placed her; but she genuinely seemed to get a thrill in standing atop the Revere Beach seawall – watching the waves crest and the snow mount and the tide surge.

And in the comfy confines of my home, I stayed glued to the tube; waiting for them to head to commercial, when they would run a blink and you missed it crawl of the School Cancellations. No Internet to check. No text alerts. No constant scroll at the bottom of the screen. You just gave yourself The Clockwork Orange treatment – kept those eyes wide open – and soaked it all in.

The love of a snow day was tattooed to my brain back when we’re all so young and impressionable and as a lifelong New Englander, I’ve never lost it – even when the torch was inevitably passed to me, and I became a homeowner and had to take care of slicing my own path through a frozen sea of white. I’ll gladly labor my lumbar if it means were looking at a ‘foot-plus’ to paint the landscape in blinding white. No matter how much work all that fluff means; a winter wonderland always soothes my soul.

I don’t know what it is about snowstorms but they always remain tethered to memory. Aside from the random Hurricane we’ve watched amble its way this far North, I can’t really peg any of my lifelong memories to rain events. They’re just so nondescript and uneventful. In fact, it’s the lack of rain I usually recall as one of the little “perks” to home ownership is the love of a lawn. I don’t know when I became “that guy” but each Summer sets me off when the inevitable drought drains my acre and a half of much-nourishing waters. Maybe it’s because I saw my own head go to seed and I don’t want my precious lawn to follow suit. There’s only room enough for one tough baldie ’round these parts.

But as I look back over my life, I recall so many snowstorms.

So many memories.

Hell, I walked through Thundersnow decades before it became a buzzword.

Here’s proof positive that I’m old. In my day, we were released from school in the midst of a blinding blizzard; and were forced to walk two miles – in snow – uphill – both ways… AND WE LIKED IT!!!

And that’s the stone cold truth.

Where every kid nowadays gets their own personal bus if they live more than 2 houses away from the school, in my day you could only get a bus if you lived more than 1 & 1/2 miles from school. I lived 1 & 3/8 miles from school, thus I was forced to beat my feet. It was about a 25-minute walk from my home – made slightly longer by the various friends and countrymen I stopped to pick up along the way – including my longtime best friend (and this site’s benefactor), Sean.

Schools today will cancel at the very hint of snow – so if the forecast calls for anything close to 3″ to fall by noon, it’s just not happening. Cancel your plans and start popping the Motrin, ’cause the kids ain’t going anywhere!!!

Well, back in the Eighties, schools lived fat on the lack of litigation – so they opened their doors and demanded we show, even if you walked in soaked from head-to-toe in slush, “the color of television tuned to a dead channel”.

On this particular day, it was snowing fairly significantly on our way to school. By about 10 am, the superintendent realized this wasn’t about to cease anytime soon, so he ordered the schools evacuated. Of course, most parents only owned one car at the time – and often times one parent was a few states away at work – meaning if you didn’t take the bus, you were sent out into the wild.

I think the school committee secretly hoped that they could thin the herd by sending us out into the great wide open on these little impromptu expeditions. If wolves didn’t eat us we’d likely find ourselves snowbound on the long journey home and be forced to nosh upon the weakest in our crowd.  What they lost in student body, they’d make up in supply savings.

Hey, you make an omelet, you…

But we were resilient bastards – and somehow we always made it home. On that particular day, Nintendo was our guiding light – as Sean and I had made plans to permanently trade my Super Mario Brothers for his Gyromite and Duck Hunt. In geek circles, this transaction is equivalent to “Babe Ruth for a Broadway play”. Pure folly on my part and a horror I’d live with until that blessed day that Al Gore dreamed up the Internet and allowed me to pirate every last inch of that Mushroom Kingdom.

I remember trudging each step towards Sean’s pad. My feet screamed to be put down and my hands pledged to do the task as soon as I could pry them from my cold, dead arms. My eyes scanned the horizon – hoping to find a wayward Tauntaun that I could slice open and crawl inside for a warm, winter’s nap. The only thing that kept me going was the promise of one more drab gray cartridge designed to keep me from studying and thus reducing the United States to a legion of lay-about couch potato loafers.

Somehow, we made it to his place. Sean handed over the games, the gun peripheral and the Robot Operating Buddy (R.O.B.) that Nintendo packaged with some versions of the NES in a bid to get toy stores to carry video games in the wake of the industry-killing “Atari Crash”.

I tossed it all in my pack, and plunged forth into the tundra. I had maybe a 1/2-mile left in my journey but the conditions were worsening and now with Sean safe and secure in his abode, I couldn’t even harbor the thought of eating my best friend if my energy stores depleted. And it had been at least 45 minutes since I ate last. Would I make it, ALIVE?!?!?

But I knew I had to live. After all, I’m the only one who knew the fabled Konami code in my home and if I were to perish, my sisters would never make it to the end of Contra without the additional 99 lives that sequence of buttons commanded. Like the heroic World War II Navajo Windtalkers, I needed to push forward to insure the secret codes made it into ally hands.

So I mustered up every last ounce of my strength and commanded those skinny little pipe cleaners I called legs to mush. One foot after the other. Just the way Rex Ryan likes it.

“There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

Damn it – no matter how hard I clicked my Moon Boots together, it wasn’t getting me there any sooner. I trudged on.

Dodging errant snowballs, plows driven by Tanqueray-soaked Teamsters and the occasional Yeti, I finally crested the steps to my home and pushed forth through the portal. And as I walked through the door, I heard a peculiar sound. From the living room came a familiar refrain.

“Like sands of the hour glass… so are the days of our lives.”

Oh Hell No!!! How the hell did my sister beat me here? Encased in a 16″ shell of snow, I plowed forth into the living room – soaking every last inch as I launched into a tirade demanding to know how she beat me to the couch and thus secured television privileges for the afternoon.

“Mom kept me home from school.”

And finally the conspiracy revealed itself. With my parents divorced for a year, I was already adrift in that Sea of She – their combined chromosomes waging a daily battle to ‘X’ out my ‘Y’. The only thing that kept me tethered to my manhood was my love of technology. So long as I had command of the TV, I’d rule the roost.

But somehow, as I was lost in the snow-shrouded wilderness, they’d sprung the coup and I was chased from the coop. The hens had won and were keeping this wolf at bay. For another day, at least.

So, I did what any big brother would do. I grabbed the big boxy remote the size of a Volvo that had entered our home when our neighborhood FINALLY got glorious cable television and the vast menagerie of 42 channels it offered – and I ripped the 9-volt from its innards – firing it into the snow.

The ensuing battle was legendary. Cushions were thrown. Pillows were tossed. Feelings were hurt. At one point, I believe she pulled my hair and even as I write that, a tear spills onto my cheek. I had hair once. A glorious, Dep-drenched spiked mullet that shot towards the heavens defying the Gods to rid me of my follicles.

But I digress.

Somehow I took control of the airwaves and after a spell, I was locked and loaded and firing away at those digital ducks while taking the occasional pot shot at that two bit, 8-bit canine that continued to cackle whenever I missed.

And as the hours wore on and the snow piled high, I heard something so alien. A low rumble followed by a bass-shattering boom.

Thundersnow!!!

Two flakes enter. One flake leaves.

I looked out and though I was staring through a milky gauze of low-to-no visibility – true blizzard conditions – and the descending twilight had rendered the downy blanket of gray above an otherworldly shade of pink and purple; the clouds were now lit with the rhythmic beaming of a billion flashbulbs.

The thunder rolled in again and the clouds continued their show. Somewhere, someone fired up the Pink Floyd and gave birth to the world’s first laser show – putting Planetariums in the black from here on out.

All the while, I stared wide-eyed and motionless. Nintendo’s spell has been shattered by the pure allure of natural beauty. I called up to my sister Jenna – who had hours earlier escaped to her room to listen to KISS-108′s Uncle Dale Dorman work through the day’s most requested tunes – and implored her to soak this in. Roxette could wait!!! I never knew if she heeded my call but I do know one thing.

At that moment I understood the majesty of a winter’s morn – even if I was discovering it late in the day.

And ever since that day, I’ve looked towards every snowstorm to transport me from the mundane to the surreal life. To add additional tiles to this mosaic of memory.

With its uncluttered canvas of pure, pristine white – snow has always added color to my life.