AlyssaV

Yesterday, it snowed.

 This winter has been characterized by freakish warmness, where the temperatures climb from -20 to 10 or more degrees (celsius), overnight.  Has it always been this way?  I’ve lived in this area, in the Carolinian Belt, for most of my life and I seem to remember lots of snow and lots of sun.  It was cold, but appropriately so.  There were never days when I actually couldn’t go outside for fear of it being too cold.  Now, we have warm, wet, springlike days, but they do little to cancel out the embittering windchill and precipitation and frostbite risk of the other days. 

Yesterday, it snowed all day.  It snowed enough that the City of Thorold thought it necessary to plow that very day, instead of waiting three or four days like they usually do.  I came outside to go to my evening class to find my car blocked in by a high wall of snow.  Not only that, but I had gotten a $50 ticket for “impeding snow removal” or some shit.  Nice.  20 houses down, my neighbour (whose license plate reads “4A PRTY”) was also blocked in, but had not received a similar sweet gift.

 Guess who’s fighting the system?  I am.  The City of Thorold won’t know what hit ‘em.  As I told Albano last night, “It’ll be like Roe v. Wade, except better.”

 I was right pissed about this new turn of events, but still had to find some way to get out of the snow so I could go to my 6pm history seminar and, later, the Surreal Beaver Ball.  It was 5:50 pm.  The snow was not budging.  I went into the garage and found a shovel and started slugging away, but it didn’t take long for me to become discouraged.  There was just so much snow.  I thought about going inside, curling up with O magazine or some other embarrassing yet entertaining piece of work, and hoping it would all melt in time for me to get to work on Saturday.

And just then, who should arrive but… my roommates.

 I want you to attempt to go back in time, in your memory, and think about high school.  Think about the popular girls, the snobs, rich girls who wore the right clothes and had the right hair and were the right size to get all the right guys.  They were the girls having big parties, or being invited to all the parties, that you were never invited to and only heard about through the rumour mill for weeks afterward.  The pretty girls, the skinny girls.  That image epitomizes my roommates.  They are thin, shop at Victoria’s Secret, tan till they are orange, lust after Abercrombie models, and go clubbing and bar-hopping while covered in glitter in their spare time.  By contrast, I am chubby, homeless-looking, and pale with awkward self-cut hair and an affinity for sweatshirts, reading, and hamsters.  We kind of clash.

There is usually tension in our house, strained conversation.  This time, there was none.  They were already dressed in sweatpants (!!!) and winter gear, ready to dig their cars out of the disaster.  And so, for the next hour and a half, I shoveled with them.  They dragged the stereo into the garage and blasted R+B as we giggled, laughed, and struggled in the snow.  I pushed their cars out of the mire, and they pushed mine.  We high-fived.  Afterwards, they even offered me some of their delicious-looking leftovers from the Oliver Garden.  It was quite the bonding experience. 

So I missed the seminar.  I did make it to the last hour or so of the Beaver Ball, although in my rush I had forgotten to bring any money.  I listened to poet Stuart Ross talk about swimming pools in his very own living room.  In the midst of all the bizarre art and people in strange costumes (like my professor dressed as the virgin mary, complete with halo), I felt warm and infused with a peaceful glow.  This may have been my body desperately attempting to recover from all the strenuous activities I had just forced upon it.  But part of it was the feeling that things in my house were finally ‘alright’, that I could be friendly with these girls without it feeling fake, or without me suspecting diabolical motives on their part.