Four Bad Decisions Made During Blizzards Past

Some people, for reasons I cannot comprehend, are disappointed that the much-hyped Winter Storm Draco left us with nothing more than a dusting of snow. I was definitely not among those people. I hate snow. I loathe cold and I loathe precipitation, so the combination of the two stirs a hatred within me so potent that I can feel my eyes turning to liquid fire as soon as they are afflicted by the offending weather forecast. I find no beauty in snow. Not when it first falls, and not when it turns into a hideous brown slush when the thaw begins. And I am not a very confident driver in the best of conditions, so when it comes to driving in the snow, I'm often weeping and gripping the steering wheel so tightly that I'm surprised it has not permanently fused with my hand.
But aside from all of these reasons, I hate snow because I've noticed a pattern wherein I make particularly bad judgment calls during snowstorms. I'm going to tell you about the first four that come to mind. Actually, three of these happened during the same snowstorm...
I. FEBRUARY 2011 - WENT RUNNING
I'm sure everyone knows the snowstorm I'm talking about. Definitely the biggest one in the last several years. This was the snowstorm when virtually everyone I knew was off work, and when my brother went out with all his army medic gear to help people whose cars went into ditches. (In just a few hours, the number of motorists he'd helped was somewhere in the teens.)
I decided that morning would be a lovely time for a jog.
Now, mind you, there were a few obstacles. Like the fact that the sidewalks weren't cleared whatsoever. But the major roads were somewhat plowed, and it's not like there were any cars on them. And when else does a jogger get the privilege of running right down the middle of Wolf Road in the middle of the day?
I did see the occasional person out shoveling his/her driveway, and I generally was not met with kindness and acceptance. "You've got to be kidding me!" one man exclaimed. "DID YOU TAKE YOUR PILLS THIS MORNING?" another called after me. And yet another gaped at me and then pulled out a video camera and started taping me, steadily following me with the camera until I was out of sight.
While jogging was definitely more constructive than other things I ended up doing that day (read on), I ultimately felt it was a bad decision because a) during the portions of the run when I was going through knee-deep snow, my heart rate surged so high that I was actually concerned, and b) I was already uneasy at the idea of the random stranger sending the video footage to some news station, and it seemed like just the kind of stupid video they'd show to lighten things up during the last 2 minutes of the broadcast ("Suburban girl forgot to take pills!"). The jeers of my neighbors were already making me feel bizarre, like an outcast, the soon-to-be-infamous Crazy Running Girl. That sudden desperation is probably what led me to Bad Decision II.
II. FEBRUARY 2011 - JOINED FREE DATING WEBSITE
Being confined to the apartment and afraid of my Crazy Running Girl status crippling my prospects for a social life, I decided to join a free dating website. I was not 100% sure about this. I tried to make it explicitly clear that I was just looking to go out to places around the Chicago area, meet new people, and have fun. I said I was looking for "friendship" and set a geographic range of within an hour of Mokena, an age range, and a few other restrictions (no guys with kids, etc.). I made it ok for guys who met these requirements and were also looking for friendship to contact me.
So, I'm guessing the reasons that some dating websites are free is because they completely disregard your filters.
During the total of one hour I idly monitored my emails, I got many incoherent, often all-caps and unrecognizably misspelled, and occasionally really offensive declarations of love, most of them from men way out of my age range and in different states (in one case, a different country). Sometimes the same people who'd declared their love for me just minutes ago would then call me names for not responding. Well, I suppose they weren't all rude. There was a very polite and eloquent gentleman from Virginia, who looked like a frightened, skinny nerd in his pictures (yeah, he actually looked frightened in the pictures, maybe he should have smiled), who told me that he believed that there is someone for everyone and not to let the distance dissuade me because he would be willing to relocate for the right girl.
The one person I talked back to was the one person who actually did live within an hour of me, and was only one year too old for the date range I'd set. However, he was dead set on coming to my house.
Me: "I would be fine with meeting somewhere, but I'd rather go out, try something new."
Him: "Nah. I'll just get a six pack of something and come over to your place."
Me: "Well, the thing is, my apartment kind of sucks. Wouldn't you rather do something that's a little more... in public?"
Him: "No"
Me: "Sorry, I'm not comfortable meeting in private. Plus, I live with my big brother. My big, military, firearm-loving brother." (Okay, so I didn't actually say that stuff about my brother. And while it is true that he's big, in the military, and loves firearems, I am guessing he'd just laugh at my plight if I were in an awkward situation like this. Actually, what's more likely is he'd talk to Dating Website Guy and try to gauge DWG's love of firearms. If he found that DWG's love matched his own, he'd probably shove me toward him and tell me not to screw this up.)
I got off the computer for the rest of the day, and a few weeks later I remembered that I'd joined a dating website and it sucked and I should probably delete my account. But I couldn't remember my username or password. So, my profile is still out there, but guess what? I haven't gotten a single message from anyone since that first day. THEY DIDN'T REALLY LOVE ME! THEY WERE JUST TOO LAZY TO NAVIGATE PAST THE TOP OF THE "RECENTLY JOINED" LIST! I'm sure that once my fifteen minutes of fame were over, they moved right on to the next girl at the top of the Recently Joined list, didn't they? I mean, not that I cared. I bet she was prettier than me. Wasn't she?
III. FEBRUARY 2011 - AGREED TO HOST A MARY KAY PARTY
Shortly after my social networking fail, I got a call from my friend Maryam, who sells Mary Kay products. I guess part of the whole Mary Kay thing is you're supposed to try to get your friends to have parties too, and then try to get the people at those parties to have parties, and so on and so forth until you've built an impressive and moisturized army.
I am the last person who should host a Mary Kay party. I am not girly. I don't do girly stuff. I typically used maybe 3 makeup items, one I'd bought from Maryam and the others from the dollar bin at the end of the aisle at Jewel Osco. To top it off, I lived in a barely furnished apartment with my military, firearm-loving brother. The one saving grace was that my brother's taste in decor is actually surprisingly feminine; he'd put up a floral scroll, a few Impressionist prints, you know, Monet, Van Gogh, the usual. So I decided my apartment MIGHT provide a girly enough atmosphere for Maryam to do her thing, provided the guests didn't mind sitting on the floor.
So, I agreed. I blame the snow.
The party that I threw probably set Maryam's makeup-selling career back about five years. If it weren't for me, she might own that pink Mary Kay convertible or whatever the heck they give their top salespeople.
I couldn't really bring myself, my non-glamorous, makeup imbecile self, to create a facebook event that was JUST a Mary Kay party. So, I called it a "Mary Kay and Interpretive Dance Party." The event picture was me and a college roommate performing dance moves (actually, she was trying to shove me in the closet and I was resisting, but it looks like a dance) and I invited about 12 or 15 girls I knew (half of which had already been to a Mary Kay party for Maryam) to come jazzercise and enjoy a makeup presentation.
My facebook event caused mass confusion and fear. I heard that the girls I invited asked amongst themselves, "What is this? Is this really a thing?" I guess I can't say I blame them.
The reason I forgot to mention why I REALLY shouldn't have thrown this party is, when I throw parties, people don't come.
Two people showed up.
While this party was as damaging to my self esteem as it was to Maryam's career, she managed to move past it, and I threw two more (non-Mary Kay) parties over the course of the next year that were also attended by about two people each before finally banning myself from party-throwing. If only I could blame those other two parties on snow...
IV. DECEMBER 2010 - DENNYS
A group of my friends get together at the Denny's in Mokena every Christmas night. I'd said I would go many times, but I'm usually at my parents' in Momence on Christmas, and just have never been able to motivate myself to make the drive back because Christmas tires me out, not to mention I've usually gone way over my calorie limit for the entire week before noon on Christmas.
I always wanted to go, though. So, when I actually had the energy to make the drive on Christmas 2010, I decided I was GOING to Denny's... massive snowfall or no massive snowfall.
Somewhere in the cornfield wilderness between Momence and Mokena, I got a flat tire and had to pull into someone's driveway. It was a lone house out in the country, with no other houses within sight. And- I was stuck in the driveway.
Let alone not being able to change my own tire, I couldn't shovel myself out of the driveway. I got the shovel out of my trunk and tried my best, but nothing... I was stuck. And I had the feeling that this is how every horror movie begins. I wasn't the main character but the stupid girl who gets killed right at the beginning before they introduce the main plot. I was certain the next person I was going to see was going to be a serial killer dressed as Santa, or a clown, or Clown Santa, and wielding a chain saw.
At some point, my friends texted me and asked if I were coming to Denny's. "I can't," I responded. "My car broke down and I'm stuck in the snow."
Perhaps forty minutes later, my friends followed up by texting back, "Do you need help?" But by then my parents were on their way to rescue me, and the person who lived in the house had come out to investigate, showing no serial killing inclinations whatsoever.
I tend to tell this story to anyone who claims to want a white Christmas. I remind them that white Christmases can be deadly. However, no one seems to really care about my plight that Christmas night. Okay, I guess I didn't suffer tremendously, but it was cold, and I didnt' get to go to Denny's, and I had to get new tires, and there was that interval of time when I really thought that I might end up as clown food.
Just recently I was in a meeting at work with my boss and the majority of the Customer design team when the whole white Christmas campaign was brought up, and so I began telling my tale of woe. They were completely unsympathetic.
Coworker 1: Wow, you're still not over this, are you? You even look like you're still cold.
Coworker 2: No, she always looks like that.
Coworker 1: Is the point of this story going to be that you actually died that night, and the whole time you've been working here you've been a ghost?
Me (to my boss): Well, maybe I at least deserve a little more slack then, on account of being dead.
Coworker 3: Actually, I would think that should mean she doesn't need a lunch break.
And so, rather than sympathizing with my hatred of snow, they went on blithely wishing for it to be terrible, terrible weather on what is supposed to be the happiest day of the year. And I sat. And I listened. But I did not, no, I did not understand. And if you are among those hoping for a white Christmas this year, I hope that I did not offend you. I also hope that perhaps I've opened your eyes to the hidden dangers of snow. And also prepared you for any stupid decisions I will probably make the next time it hits us.