The Metro Atlanta area was dusted with an inch or two of wet snow overnight, setting in motion a unique southern phenomenon.
By the time I turned on the morning news at 8:00am, countless schools and businesses were being reported as closed or opening late. Stores were bought out of every last gallon of milk and loaf of bread.
Driving down the virtually deserted freeway during prime downtown connector rush hour, I had an epiphany.
There is something in the Coca Cola. Something that causes perfectly normal people to cease functioning as 21st century human beings, whenever they’re exposed to even microscopic levels of snow. The amount of snow that only dogs can smell.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Atlanta is Coca Cola ground zero, and I have never seen people over-react to snow to such a degree anywhere else in my worldly travels.
Once I had isolated the source, the subtleties of this conspiracy continued to unravel.
By the time I pulled into my parking place, I had fleshed out my theory into a year-round cycle of chemical manipulation.
I don’t yet have enough evidence that it is the same substance, but in the Summer the pendulum seems to swing the other direction. No man, woman, or child is safe from the overwhelming urge to get up and head to Turner Field, buy tickets to a Braves game, and sit there in the humidity slurping on a Coke.
The secret ingredient in Coca Cola might’ve started as cocaine, but I’m convinced that the currently formula involves some psychotropic substance that someone fished out of the Chattahoochee…aka The Hoochee Factor.
Same thing here in Baltimore. The Weather Guys call for snow (an inch or two :rolleyes:) and people flock to the grocery store in droves, stocking up on milk, bread and toilet paper. The local news crews always send a reporter out to the closest store to hang around the exits and interview people as they leave. Their carts are always jam-packed - 2 or 3 gallons of milk, 2 or 3 loaves of bread, enough TP for years, and piles of frozen pizzes and junk food. And then they go in and film the empty shelves.
“Stores sold out of bread and milk! An inch of snow is expected! Film at eleven!”
And this is the freaking Mid-Atlantic! It’s all gonna melt in a few hours! It’s not like we’re going to get several feet of snow, and it’s not like anyone’s going to be snowbound for weeks.
Okay, this year was an exception, but c’mon…
I wish it was like that up in the mountains where I grew up. I think the school district I spent my school years in hasn’t canceled school on account of snow in something like 20-25 years. Denver shuts down a little more often, but not really. Of course, things shut down for other reasons. Mostly the fact that the skiing during a storm is usually pretty good, if its not too windy.
My family drove down from Montreal to Bethesda to visit my aunt one winter, and when we arrived, we saw nervous drivers swerving around the road in maybe five centimeters of snow. There were fender-benders all over. Schools (and stores!) were closed for the day.
Wimps!
In Montreal, unless we get a meter of snow piled in giant drifts by hurricane-force winds overnight, we don’t get a snow day. I think students up here watching the US news stations are getting jealous!