It’s snowing.

Finally. I’m so glad that the world will once again be rightly covered in a blanket of snow. At least, I hope it will be. I hope this isn’t a snow tease, where it snows, sticks around till about Sunday morning, and then suddenly has second thoughts about abandoning its wife and kids and throws some twenties on the dresser, kisses UMass on the check murmuring ‘thanks, babe. I’ll call you,” and takes off. We’ll wait by the phone on Monday, looking around at all that grass and pavement and wondering when snow will call. But it won’t.

Snow can be such a bastard at times.

But for now snow is here, and I can count on it to do one thing – significantly decrease the number of skateboarding morons on this campus.

Let’s define a skateboarding moron, before I start getting letters from the non-moron skateboarding community. Do you use your skateboard as a means of transportation? Do you use proper equipment and respect the rights of pedestrians? Do you conduct your attempts at tricks in a designated area?

If you have answered ‘Yes’ to these questions, you are a responsible skateboarder.

Most of the moron skaters seem to hang out in two places: the front of the Fine Arts Center and the Campus Center. Why these places? Because the morons know those are the two places on campus I go – past the FAC and to the Campus Center. They are always there – the twelve and up rejects of healthy society, desperately trying to flip their skateboards and then land on them again. Or they attempt to grind along the cement retaining wall near the Campus Center. Or they throw a large trash receptacle in the middle of a handicapped parking lot and try and jump over it.

I have yet to see any of them pull off a trick. Every time I walk by I hear the sounds of their follies, though: roll, roll, roll, roll, scrape, clatter, clatter. Or if it’s a jump, delete the scrape noise. Here’s the noise I want to hear: roll, roll, roll, roll, scrape, thud, clatter…siren.

The little rolling SOBs are destroying our campus. Look at the retaining wall outside the Campus Center, near Hasbrouck. Look at the Student Union Steps. That chipped, blackened edge. And it’s only a matter of time before one of the little morons splits their head open. Of course, they’ll blame UMass, even though there are clearly posted signs: Do Not Skate. Go build a place for yourselves, you miniature hellions. We built this city on rock ‘n’ roll. Sorry, went into a Paul Kantner thing for a second there. We built this college on learning, reading, writing; not flipping plywood like some sort of twisted, nancy-boy lumberjack contest.

Hey you! You hooded-sweatshirt and Sketchers wearing Tony Hawk wannabe – stop wrecking public property. You are not Blink-182 – get off the stairs.

But the snow…sweet, sweet snow. Quiet snow. Impossible to wheel in snow. This will save what little remains of my sanity.

That, and the upcoming winter break, which is undoubtedly the greatest single possible time to be at UMass, will preserve me. It’s quiet, it’s gorgeous and it’s deserted. Did I mention how quiet it is? It’s so quiet. It’s so empty. It’s great. You can look out and see what Southwest looks like dark. And I mean really dark, not just with the lights out and backlit with bonfires and burning lounge furniture.

You can go into Amherst and go anywhere you want. Every bar is your oyster. Every store and shop there is catering to you and you alone, because once again, Amherst’s population dwindles to about 5.

Damn – I just realized that by telling people how great it is, they’d stay, thereby defeating my grand plan of total control of the campus.

Before you scheme-wrecking bastards start to destroy my idyllic winter wonderland, you should remember this: It’s cold.

I don’t think you understand me. It’s really cold. I’m talking polar bears wearing scarves kind of cold. It’s the kind of cold that you step out in and you feel like someone just hit you in the face. Breathing in is hazardous, because lung tissue freezes. You carry your driver’s license on you at all times, so the authorities can identify your corpse-cicle when they find it three months after the nine foot drifts melt.

Normal travel routes – such as the foot bridge over the pond – are closed down, as are sections of the FAC. Why? Because they may collapse, it’s that cold. Ice covers everything, including you if you don’t move fast enough.

You can’t really go out at night, because there is a very likely chance of you getting lost and not being able to find your way back to your room, resulting in the aforementioned corpse-cicle. Blinding snow. Bone-chilling cold. Your skin pales, your eyes sink back into your skull. You take on an eerie, Eater of the Dead like look, as the sun only burns for a few hours during the early morning and gives no warmth whatsoever. Amherst is an abandoned little ice ball, and as you make your way across the frozen wasteland that is campus, you wonder if this is where they filmed the Hoth scenes for Empire Strikes Back. Darkness falls about 3:30 in the afternoon, and since the sun rises – or at least pops its head over the horizon at 8:30, it means that your world is dark, cold and miserable.

Unless you’re me, in which case, this is your idea of heaven.

So snow, you magnificent clouds, snow! Cover UMass with your chilly white, anti-skateboarding folds of wonderful crystallized water. Chill the rest of the campus until it cracks. And then freeze it some more.