This past Thursday, we woke up to snow falling. The frozen precipitation kind of went over the weathermen’s radars, so it wasn’t expected by really anyone in the DFW area. We went to school as normal, and yeah, my SUV skidded and fish-tailed a little bit on the roads. It didn’t stop me from getting my morning coffee, though.
A couple of hours later, I got the call from Gabe’s school that they were closing school at noon. I was livid. There wasn’t an inch of snow outside. The roads were not that bad when I took him to school. Why in the world was this stupid city overreacting? We’ve already had one total BS “snow day”, are we really going to knee-jerk over this too? I took my outrage to Twitter and Facebook, pretty much inviting all of my northerner friends to make fun of the panic-mongerers down here in Texas.
People told me Dallas didn’t want to become another Atlanta. They said it was good the schools were closing early. You don’t want to be out in that at closing times. I was too busy being pissed about all the work I wasn’t going to get done now. Damn inconsiderate weather. Stupid drama queen city.
But I forgot that the snow is not the problem. The problem lies in the ice under the snow, the fact that we really don’t have that many sand trucks available to deploy, and hardly anyone owns snow tires. If I tried to go over 15 mph, my car skidded. Controlling it was so scary crossing the main intersection by my house, I decided on the way home to go a back way. Silly me for not picking the roads more traveled, which therefore have less ice and snow.
The road I chose had a small hill going down to a stop sign. I still was not traveling more than 15 mph, and since I was skidding so badly, I started to brake at the top of the hill. That did not stop my car from sliding into the car sitting at the stop sign. I put my car in park and took off my seatbelt, and as I started to get out, I happened to glance up in my rearview mirror to see another car spin into mine as she was trying to avoid sliding into me. Her car knocked my car into the guy in front of me yet again.
Fortunately, no one was hurt, not even my two kids in the car. The baby slept through the entire ordeal. The guy in front of me had a hitch that pierced my front bumper, and as a result, his bumper only had a scratch, so he told me not to worry about it. My rear bumper is smashed. My rear hatch is bashed in. The most humorous aspect of it is that my rear sensor has fallen into the bumper, so whenever I put the car in reverse, it beeps rapidly as though there is something right behind me.
So yeah, it’s fitting that the time that I decided to emotionally explode on social media, the world reminds me how dangerous Texas is in snow and ice. We just aren’t as prepared for it as other states, and with how infrequent it does get this bad, there’s no reason for that to really ever change. I mean, why would the city of Dallas invest in something worthwhile? That’s just too logical for politicians to do. They’re too busy wanting to spend millions of dollars on building a canal system in downtown for tourism.
The point is, this experience shall remind me in the future that the next time I get the urge to spew anger on the Internet, I need to remember how I want to only report positivity on social media. There’s enough hatred and negativity there to last me several lifetimes.
Jenn Daniel says
Hey, don’t feel too bad. After living up north, I learned how to drive on this wintry stuff. However, up there, they have the same problems we Southerners have during the first few events. With the first snow of the season, the streets are clear of salt, so they, too, deal with the ice under the snow thing. After a few events, the cars grind the salt into the roads, and things get better (except you have to get undecarriage washes for your car all winter)! So, yes, Northerners are better at handling snow and cold weather, much like we Southerners are much better at handling the summer heat. Funny thing is, no matter how much we like to proudly say we can handle “our” weather and laugh at our counterparts, we all still complain about the weather handed to us!