Here in Northeastern Oklahoma, it snows every winter.  I’m not talking about a dusting, but measurable inches.  Naturally, some winters we have more snow than others, but we do get snow.  You’d think, then, that we get snow every winter, that people ’round these parts would be more nonchalant about it.  You’d think.  But this is Oklahoma, and each and every time they predict snow, we act like we’ve never seen snow before, and get all worked up about it.  The forecast called for a couple of inches of snow, and pandemonium ensued.

I went to get gas yesterday morning.  It was in the 30s and overcast.  At the station at which normally there are two cars at the twelve pumps, every pump was busy.  Why?  Oh yeah!  Got to fill up, got to fill up, got to fill up, becuz snow may be a-comin’.  They were predicting snow for late evening, and at 730 in the morning, there were lines at the gas station.  Gotta get it now, for it’s the last gas on Earth!

I spent the first twenty-two years of my life in Missouri, and I later spent three more in Illinois.  That’s a quarter-century I lived in states that have substantial snowfall in the winter.  In those twenty-five years, I never recall a gasoline shortage over a couple of inches of snow.  The 18 inches we got overnight when I was a kid, yes, as the entire St. Louis Metro was paralyzed for a couple of days.  Ice storms?  Yes, but only because of the loss of power to pumps.  But never just because of a mere two inches of snow.  Apparently, things are quite different here in Okie-land, as two inches of snow is a catastrophe!  Call out the Guard!

Victoria went to the grocery store to do her weekly shopping, and witnessed a run on milk.  It’s going to snow!  Gotta stock up on milk!  Of course, I’ve always thought it quite absurd to stock up on milk, something that needs to be refrigerated, as opposed to, I don’t know, water, which doesn’t, because, if, Heaven forbid, the power goes off for a day or two as a result of the two inches of snow, then the supply that you stocked up on to get through the outage, i.e., milk, will go bad and you will thirst to death before the power comes back on.  But hey, this is Oklahoma!

We actually did get the accursed snow, a little more than an inch and a little less than two, and we must call off school!  Don’t want little Johnny and little Janey getting buried in all that snow!  By golly, we wouldn’t be able to find them, well, until tonight!  Heck, it’s the principle of the thing!

Driving in Oklahoma in the snow has officially been banned by the Geneva Convention as overly cruel.  The fifty miles from home to work, I, and a Honda in front of me, had to continuously switch lanes, first left, then right, then left, then right, to avoid striking the idiots who were insisting on driving 25 miles an hour on a highway that had been plowed!  No, all the overly cautious drivers couldn’t take up the same lane so that those who were driving the appropriate speed could get around them in the other lane.  No, that is too logical.  Instead, they had to fan themselves out across all the lanes, forcing drivers who were driving properly to constantly change lanes, and as anyone knows, it is when you are turning the wheel, such as when changing lanes, that you maximize the potential to slide out and lose control.  It’s like as soon as they predict rain, all Okies get a bad case of the stupids.  Almost like the are being subjected to some sinister kind of mind control.  Almost.  I only wish that were the case!