Want Some Real Snow?
In my four years at Mount Union, one day every year stands out as being my absolute favorite: Snow Carnival.
After one particularly prolific snowstorm, all classes would be canceled; we’d have Snow Carnival instead. Students would flock to the quad to create snow sculptures, build igloos, have snowball battles and flop around making snow angels.
During my first two years, I participated with all of my vigor. I am not an artist and I have very little skill when it comes to snow, but I had a blast, surrounded by friends and sorority sisters, all of us freezing cold and laughing … then to the caf for hot chocolate with marshmallows.
On Bonnie’s first Snow Carnival – my junior year – she’d said, “Let me sleep!” So I had – although I felt like half of me was indoors while the other half played games and had fun. I had a good day without Bonnie; later we had some beer delivered to the dorm and spent the rest of the evening drinking, blasting music and pretending it was a weekend.
By my senior year, after they canceled classes we both went back to sleep. We’d both been quite drunk the night before. Unlike the prior three years, I no longer cared that I was missing out on Snow Carnival. My new motto was simple: “Fuck it.”
I had to live this motto or the pain would be debilitating.
But during Snow Carnival senior year, I decided to wake up Bonnie. Her door wasn’t locked, as usual, and I walked in and plopped myself in Bonnie’s chair to wait.
She rolled over, disheveled, and said, “Hey. Ya want a beer?”
“You have fucking beer?!” I marveled. Usually all the beer was gone by morning.
“I think there’s a couple in there,” she said. “Gimme one.”
I opened her fridge and, sure enough, found four beers. It was like Christmas! No classes and beer before breakfast. Of course it was well past noon, so it was a very late breakfast.
Bonnie sat up and cracked her beer. I waited for her to take a sip before I spoke again.
“Want some real snow?” I asked Bonnie.
“I’m not going out there,” she said.
“No, I mean real snow,” I said. “Santa Claus gave me a present.”
Snow Carnival happened to occur the very day after Nick gave me my own vial of cocaine. Suddenly the cocaine-slang word “snow” took on a whole new meaning.
“You are fucking shitting me,” she said. “Give me some right now!”
Bonnie turned up the music to full blast, and we had a day to rival all past and future Snow Carnivals. We ordered steak subs and a twelve-pack of beer. Every so often, we slyly pulled out our illegal drugs and carefully designed small lines on the desk, trying to preserve it for as long as possible. We knew we weren’t going anywhere that day, and we needed the cocaine to last as long as possible – which, we knew, would only be one day. This was our first, last and only personal cocaine party.
People ran down the hall past the door of Bonnie’s room, whooping and hooting and loving life, sometimes knocking and wandering in, causing us to panic and cover the lines with a mug – then, eventually, to lock the door to keep out the unruly.
At the time, we thought we ruled the world.
Looking back, we missed the greatest day of the year and never left the room.