I woke up this morning and looked out the window. It was snowing. For the first time in two months, I had seen snow. I promptly went back to bed and slept for another hour. When I woke up, I realized it was only about a quarter of an inch, and it hadn’t even stuck to the roads. My boss probably wasn’t going to lose a day of business for something like this, so I hurried and got to work.

Dann didn’t have to work. His company announced a state-wide closure of their business because of a quarter-inch of snow. Surprisingly to those of you who have never lived in the South, my boss’s decision to stay open was more unusual than Dann’s boss’s decision to close. Once, a couple of years ago when I was at the University of Georgia, they canceled classes on the mere threat of snow. And then it didn’t snow. We were wearing T-shirts and throwing the Frisbee around outside on our “snow day.”

Tonight was to be our cell group night, but when I got there, I discovered it had been canceled because of fear of ice on the roads. It’s not fair – I still have to work, but the fun stuff gets canceled.

I used to be like they are around here – and then I moved to Missouri. Up there, you can’t shut down businesses for snow; you’d have to shut down for three straight months. You just learn to drive in the snow and deal with it. Of course, they have salt to put on the roads in Missouri, and snowplows that clear the way, but that’s only for the major highways and interstates. Most people still have to travel several miles of unsalted roads to get to a cleared road. You just learn to go slower and learn how a car feels when you start skidding, so you won’t panic. It’s not that hard.

I remember the first time my car started to skid on ice going downhill. I had it in first gear (of course), and was only going about 5 miles an hour, but I had to turn, and when I applied my brakes, my car didn’t stop. And it started to turn sideways. I knew you had to turn into it to pull out, but if I did so, my car would go straight into a deep ditch. It was touch-and-go there for a few minutes, but fortunately there wasn’t any traffic on that back road, and I was able to inch it along without undue stress until I pulled out of it. I thought I was home free after that, but no, just as I started to climb the next hill, my car lost its momentum and traction and started sliding back down the way I came. I pulled into a cleared area at the bottom of the hill and walked the last 200 yards home. After those experiences, the roads didn’t seem nearly as scary anymore.