While I was busy learning stuff in my Ecological and Sustainable Field Crops lecture on Tuesday, my greatest enemy was staging an ambush just outside the door. The professor dismissed us for a brief break and I ventured forth to stretch my legs–just to discover the dreaded White Stuff falling heavily from the sky.

Unlike me and my pal Frodo, my coursemates from Oman were filled with wonder and awe.

“It is snowing!” one said to me, grinning from ear to ear as he snapped a picture with his iPhone. Then he saw my disgruntled expression and asked, “You don’t like snow?”

I said:

“I’ve never seen snow before,” he said.

Like the snow, I felt my heart melt a little–but only a little.

“You are allowed to like it, then,” I teased. “I grew up with the stuff. I’ve seen enough of it to last a lifetime.”

Guess the Universe thought that meant I wanted more of it, so it sent its troops back a few days later. I slipped from my bed Sunday morning, trudged over to the window, saw an unearthly glow seeping through the gaps between my curtains and the wall, braced myself, and faced the truth: the infernal White Stuff had invaded again, blanketing all of creation with malevolent glee.

And then I heard a knock at my door.

“Yeah?” I called.

Reena, my flatmate, sang ever so cheerfully:

The moral of this story is this: if you want me to like you, don’t be snow.

The End.

(Except for pictures…)