Paths of snow rolling Make balls of snowy goodness. I would like some soup. HAIKU!

SUNDAY, JAN 5, 2002:Comrade Max rang me up with four words to say: "Wanna build a snowman?" Said question can only illicit one possible response from any hard-working, earnest, red-blooded American youth: "YES!" However, being a lazy pinko hippie bastard, my response was different. It was "Shore" as a matter of fact. The chosen target was my old (and Max's current) building of education, Solon High School. The plan was to build a friendly snowman in front of the building to welcome all the little children (most of whom are prolly older than I) when school resumed the next day. We arrived and noticed that the concrete slab in front of the school was salted and plowed, bereft of any snowman assembly product. We moved production over to the field across the parking lot.

Eventually, we had two suitably huge balls of snow with which to construct the snowman's body. It would be a simple task to roll them across the blacktop...or so we thought.

AUGH! Bits...everywhere... How macabre. Max's aghastness factor eventually sank to the point where he could administer first aid to the poor, poor snowball. I needed to stand back and take a few pictures of the spectacle before I was together enough to aid in the recovery effort.

DISASTER! About halfway through the lot, the fetid ball of snow collapsed, spilling its insides all over the pavement. A vain attempt was made to cobble it back together, but it was evident that it wouldn't hold together for the rest of the voyage. Only one solution seemed viable.

What's big and blue and has a trunk full of snow? An elephant in effing Alaska.

So we decided to load up Max's trunk with snow. In an amazing show of foresight towards things that could never possibly come to pass (or perhaps because Max's trunk has a history of flooding in the rainy season), Max's trunk was full of uselessly narrow strips of plastic tarpy stuff.

By lugging to the pile, by auto to the pavement, by rolling to the blacktop... A sad body for a sad snowman.

The hunks of snow were moved, over the course of about four trips, from the parking lot to the pavement in front of the school. Initially, effort was made to reconstitute the initial orbs of snow from their parts, but our collective idiocy, coupled with the force of gravity, resulted in Max and I cobbling together a sort of volcano of snow.

A mysterious shape, to be sure. I see a penguin with a hook for a hand living in an ice cave. Max sees an evil, cackling clown, such as those found in Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

It was at this point that Max and I decided to pause to document a phenomenon we noticed. Max parked his car in 'Nurse/Trainer' parking lot, establishing his status as an 18th-century child care specialist, or a British tennis shoe, and we headed to the field. We couldn't help but notice that the trails left behind by the mad snow-rolling had generated an almost haunting pattern. Not necessarily a crop circle, but definitely an interesting bit of substandard 'paranormal' activity. A crap circle, if you will. Surely, if snowmen were capable of existing for more than a few months, future snowman civilizations would look back upon these marks, which formed at the birth of their forefathers, as meaningfuls runes of the past. I think it looks like a penguin with a hook for a hand.

Our demented, albeit shortlived snowman.

So, then we rolled a head up, stuck it on top of Max's car, carted it to the body, and sat it precariously on top of the body. We gave him some big ol' branch arms, plus some antennae/antlers to complete the alien/Tuun-la sort of look that was developing. We gave him a sign, hastily scrawled by inky fingers, reading "Yay! Skool's back in session!," and denoting the Snowman as property of Jeff "Susan" Aker*. I considered extending the snowman's life by labeling it a product of the Special Education students, figuring people would be lax to destroy a snowman made by 'special' students. We opted not to do this after seeing how the snowthing turned out, as labelling such a hideously cobbled together thing as a product of special ed kids would probably be construed as an insult or a hate crime, or something. Developmentally disadvantaged kids could definitely make a better snowman than this.

It's a big snowman!

Bye, bye, snowman!