The White Death

As it does from time to time here in Cincinnati, The White Death has arrived.  What is The White Death you may ask?  Well, in Cincinnati, it is when the "forecasters" "warn" that the city may or may not receive accumulating snow.  What this "warning" does it send the city into paralyzing fear.  People forget how to drive, how to think rationally and believe they will only survive by buying a new shovel, a bag of salt and all the milk and bread their grocery cart will hold.  It is in interesting phenomenon created and perpetuated by the "forecasters".

The "forecasters".  Those seers.  The holder of all knowledge.  Only in professional baseball can you only do your job about 30% of the time and be considered "good".  The "forecasters" like to use terms like "doppler" and "possibly" and "el nino" and "buy milk your all gonna die".  They are ridiculous, weird and usually incorrect in everything they say.  They like to "warn" us of the coming storm, and make themselves feel better by laughing at us for driving like idiots in the snow they had no idea was really coming.  

I worked in a grocery store for 7 years during high school and college.  Whenever snow was "warned" to be coming we had a skid in the back with shovels, salt, gloves and that key de-icer stuff".  We would wheel it out when the "warning" came and wheeled it back after it was done.  It always amazed me how many shovels we sold.  I mean you live in Cincinnati.  Why do you already not have a shovel?  

The people, whipped into an absolute frenzy by the "warning" they got from the "forecasters" would run through the store turning their carts into instruments of wheeled fury and their new shovels into lances.  Seriously it was like Death Race 2000 in there.  Their plan?  to get to the dairy case.  See thats where the milk is.  After whipping past the bread aisle and using their shovels to swipe all the loaves of bread into their carts they'd head to the milk case.  It is the only time where the milk maids do not look at the expiration date.  The milk could have expired last week and they would still toss 4-5 gallons into their carts squishing their bread.  Shovels would quickly become weapons slashing through the air, crashing into each other in a brutal yet elegant battle.  Warrior poets they were and milk was their prize...

Once they obtained the milk they'd rush to the check out screaming about the wait, trembling with fear at the possibility of breaking down in a snow drift on their way home, with only enough bread and milk to feed 10 people for 4 weeks.  Finally they would run to their cars, tune into the latest "warning" on the radio and race home ignoring basic physics and rules of the road...racing home to eat their beloved bread and drink their glorious milk.  Shoveling their driveway while scoffing at their shovel-less neighbors and remembering that the shovel could be a deadly weapon once their ill prepared neighbors scrambled like an army of zombies towards the freshly cleaned drive way to steal the precious lifeblood of buttermilk and rye bread, because see, thats all that was left on the shelf.  

Yessir folks, the white death is here.  Stay away from my bread and milk...