David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Jan. 4, 2005

I hate winter. There, I said it

In a way, I'm glad the holidays are over. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve are happy occasions, times when families and friends should come together and share a few festive moments. They are joyous, positive and, I hope, full of love. It's not a time for hate.

But the holidays are over, and I now I have something I must say.

I hate winter.

I don't throw the word "hate" around freely. I don't hate green peppers on my pizza, I just don't like them. I don't hate the New York Yankees, even if they are tangible examples of everything wrong with sports. I don't hate fingernails down a blackboard. I don't hate it when I leave the car's interior light on for two days and drain the battery. I don't hate e-mail spam. I don't even hate it when I stub my pinky toe so bad that it bleeds.

That being said, I can honestly say that yes, Virginia, I hate winter.

I blame adulthood for my newfound hatred. Winter is great when you're a little kid, or even a big kid for that matter. I loved the winter back then -- the snow days off from school, the hot bowls of tomato soup for lunch after a morning filled with sledding, snow forts and snowball fights that inevitably ended when someone "accidentally" took one in the face. And then, in the evenings, Mom and Dad would let me stay up a bit later because school had already been called off the next day. Man, those were good times.

But not anymore. I'm an adult with two little kids, and winter is now a three-month headache.

Even when there isn't snow, it's too cold to enjoy yourself outside, and until you've been cooped up with two kids for days and days watching the thermometer not even flirt with 30 degrees, you don't know how invaluable an outdoor excursion is. Oh sure, I can bundle them up, stock some supplies, hire a Sherpa and set forth across the frozen tundra, but it won't be long until I hear, "Daddy, can we go inside and watch The Wiggles? It's cold." Part of me wants to tell them that we need to tough it out and spend some time outside, but then I think to myself, "Why? It's 25 degrees out here! I'm sure my kids are just as miserable as I am. Last one inside's a rotten egg!"

The snow is still nice. That hasn't changed. Anna and Phil love the snow, and I enjoy playing with them in it. It's funny how you don't complain about the toe-numbing cold when you're heaving a snowball at someone. But alas, the snows in Tennessee are few and far between.

But of course the snow isn't all fun and games. When you're a kid, you don't have to drive anywhere in the snow, but we adults do. If you want to maintain as high a blood pressure as possible, drive in the snow for a while. The snow is bad enough, but the morons sharing the ice-covered roads with you are the real danger. The ones who think a $45,000 four-wheel-drive SUV is a substitute for caution, awareness and common sense are the most dangerous of all.

I love it when people from Michigan or Ohio or Minnesota tell me that people in East Tennessee don't know how to drive in the snow because, "back where we're from, we get real snow." Blow it out your union hall, buddy. Take a look at those states' topographic maps. Snow is a lot easier to deal with on a flat highway than down a 20-degree hill. I'll happily take 12 inches of snow on Michigan's I-94 rather than 3 inches on I-40 where you leave Cumberland County and enter Roane County. I've watched my life flash before my eyes many a wintry night on that hellish section of interstate.

And winter's final kick in the head, of course, is the sickness -- the constant, debilitating, head-clogging sickness. Colds and flus are hard enough to avoid in the winter without adding children to the equation, but kids up the ante tenfold. Kids are germ magnets, and they love to share. You can remind them not to sneeze directly into your open mouth, but the memories of 2- and 3-year-olds just aren't very developed in some respects. You get sick, and just about the time you shake it, the little angel comes home with a new variant.

And the only thing worse than caring for a cranky, sick child is when the parent is cranky and sick and the child isn't. Anna, being a little older, has some measure of sympathy -- not much, but a little. She'll give her old man some grace time. Phil could care less. If I have a 103-degree temperature and haven't had a decent meal in three days, that just serves as a signal to Phil, nearly 2, that I'm an easy mark. He jumps on me, brings book after book after book for me to read him, and takes it upon himself to rearrange all of the kitchen shelving.

I try to be a man of the people, a caring man, a man of love, a shining example to the youth of America. But Old Man Winter has been pushing me around too much. The next cold I get, I'm going to kiss him square on the mouth and then drill him in the ear with a slushball.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.