My Snowman is King

Like everybody who has ever enjoyed a snow day as a child, I am well aware that snow is much more than a collection of crystalline water ice flakes. Snow can be magical, practical, or even an artistic medium. As somebody who grew up on Calvin and Hobbes, I have always wanted to build my own macabre legion of snowmen for the sole purpose of terrifying the neighbors. And it seems that Longwood has its own Calvin, as I have had the honor of seeing the "impaled through the gut with a lamppost" snowman while shuffling through the slush on campus.

But my story this week is, sadly, not about snowmen committing suicide or murdering each other with their carrot noses. This week I'm going to take us back to England during the winter break. While a six-inch snowfall in Virginia is fairly common, the United Kingdom is a bit of a snow virgin. More often than not, winters there are just exceedingly cold with a bit of liquid rainfall because England needs to maintain its title as "Country with the Most Miserable Weather."

Somehow, though, this past December brought a little blanket of fluffy, white snow to southern England. The entire area shut down to discourage drivers from braving the slippery roads because the English refuse to lay down salt or dirt on icy roads, presumably because doing so would ruin their picturesque beauty. So, for several days, most of the people on the military base where my family lives opted to stay at home until the ice began to melt.

When I finally dared to get in a car, I was treated to the sight of numerous happy little snowmen camped out all over the base. It seemed that at least every other house had a snowman - or, for the more progressive houses, a snow woman - smiling and waving at passing cars in its front yard.

Now if you've ever built a snowman before, I'm sure you have fond memories of bundling up in your snowsuit with your siblings or friends and braving the trek outside to painstakingly roll up the three large snowballs that would eventually become your new frosty friend. I managed to see a few local kids do just that; their faces were lit up with excitement and joy as they created a unique creature from their imagination.

But there will always be those that march to the beat of a different drum, and it seems that I tend to happen upon those rogue musicians. My family has two neighbors that live behind us. They're both fighter pilots. Not long after the roads became safe, my mother, my brother, Trevor, and I piled into the car to go somewhere. We decided to take the back road and, in doing so, passed the fighter pilots' houses.

As we drove in between their homes, we found ourselves flanked on either side by enormous, elaborate snowmen. On the left, there was a seven-foot tall masterpiece complete with stick arms and a jaunty smile. On the right, we were greeted by a group of four child-sized snow people that seemed to be on their way to a town meeting. My brother and I marveled at how nice they were, but my mother couldn't stop laughing.

"I saw them building these," she said, looking between the snow people. "Those poor kids didn't want to be there. Their fathers were the ones that really got into it." Immediately, I imagined a group of angry small children in oversized coats and hats that obscured their faces, watching their overenthusiastic fathers pile handful after handful of snow onto their growing masterpieces. My mom described the scene very similarly.

The more I looked at the snowmen the more I realized that their entire purpose was to be better than the snowmen across the street. The one of the left was certainly more massive, but the cluster on the right had numbers. Each was carefully constructed to out-do the other, giving me the eerie sensation that giving them magic silk hats would result in World War III: Icy Armageddon.

So it seems that snowmen serve many purposes. They can be tools to frighten the neighbors, an outlet of creativity for budding sculptors, a way to pass a cold afternoon, or an extension of competitive men's genitalia. What will your snowman do for you?