Short Little Stories

The snow will fall tonight, even though it hasn’t come in two long years of dusty heat. Many sources have been blamed for the lack – scientists blamed global warming, cultists blamed the groundhog, televangelists blamed pretty much everyone. But no one has truly known why, and now?

Now no one even cares.

It will be a bad snow. Hard and wet and deep, covering the earth in pure white. Shutting down the roads. In some places, the electrity. The phones.

School will be cancelled, of course. Most jobs. But for once people will be celebrating the snow itself, rather than its effects.

And despite the bitter cold, and all the little inconveniences, and the wet slush and ice that follows for another week – this day of snow, people will rejoice at. It will be something special, and at the same time… a relief, at a sense of normalcy.

(‘The world isn’t ending,’ the private relief shared by so many, spoken by so few.)

It will be satisfying to salt the roads and shovel the walk and build the snowmen and ride the sleds.

And once it is past, things will be normal again. Winter will come and go as it always does, and life will continue to go on, day by day, month by month, season by season.

But for tonight – tonight, people will cry out in celebration. The children have been doing the rain dance for two long years, and now at last they can finally smile once again.