Boston has received about 71 inches of snow so far this winter, and we've another good month to go.  An average winter, an entire winter, in Boston yields about 42 inches.  Here west of the city, we always get more, and much of the white stuff is still on the ground, including plenty of snow piles that still come up to our chins.  At this point in this incredibly snowy winter, we have reached the stage of snow nasty.  This is beyond cabin fever.  We are not just restless and itchy anymore.  We are feeling irritable, and even mean.  

With all the snow plowed up along the edges, the roads are still one to three feet narrower than normal.  The parking lots and sidewalks still have patches of ice. Traveling around to do much of anything is tedious, if not difficult and still dangerous—which makes this interface, of drivers and pedestrians and snow, a very inviting arena to focus erupting snow nastiness.  So here I go:

*Handicapped parking places
If there were ever a time that people who need handicapped slots NEED handicapped slots, this would be it.  And since our club has a pull, many elderly and disabled come for therapeutic swimming and exercising in the pool.  Parking close would be their only prayer for getting around in this terrain.  Much to my dismay, as  I was walking into my health club a couple days ago, I watched a car pull into the one remaining available handicapped slot, and the driver get out.  He was definitely elderly, grey haired and a ever-so-slightly stooped...and he had a squash racquet in his hand.  Am I missing something?  Handicapped?  Squash player?  I know getting approved for a handicapped space is a game fairly easily played.  Hard to believe that man wasn't taking the place from someone noticeably needier...

*Walking/Walking the dog
In our neighborhood, a neighborhood of walkers, the dance between pedestrians and cars is always an issue.  When the streets are normal widths, and cars go flying by on the 25-mile-an hour streets at 45 plus, regardless of pedestrians, children, animals, those of us making our way on foot are definitely annoyed, but from a safe distance on the side of the road out of the way.  Not so now.  With the snow build-up, getting out of the lane of traffic is literally impossible, but does this make these drivers slow down?  Not at all.  In fact, they may just glare all the harder, or stare a confused way like they've just seen a giant purple mushroom and can't quite process the sight, but none of that effects the old pedal foot.  My dog is a walking speedometer.  If a car is going the correct speed limit, she's pretty mellow. Too fast, and she's jumping and barking and ready to go after  that menace.  And she's right. These people are a menace.  Drivers, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? 

*Backing Up
My biggest pet peeve of all, one that takes on gargantuan proportions in this weather, is how people react to a car backing up.  Or should I say, how they DO NOT REACT.  Repeatedly, I am absolutely dumbfounded how people continue to walk in shopping center parking lots or on the street, spacing out, talking away to their walking partner, listening to their music, or whatever, without even glancing for a second at the moving vehicle.  I have seen in my mirrors someone come up on the side of my already backing up vehicle, do a little spin to just get behind my bumper, and I mean just an inch or two—WHILE I AM IN THE PROCESS OF BACKING UP—and keep on hoofing by while I slam my foot on the brake. If I hit this person, it would be MY FAULT.  Do these people have a death wish? I was backing up out of my driveway the other day, slowly coming out from the two pyramid-sized plow piles on either side, when two people popped up, on the very narrow road, behind me, and without the tiniest hesitation, kept right on walking through behind me. I braked, teetering on the hump at the end of my driveway, poking out in the street from between the two icebergs while they strolled on by. Not only do these people have an incredible amount of faith in the ability of every backing up driver to see them in time, what ever happened to common courtesy?  There was not enough room in the road for all of of us, and I was in the roadway there first. Perhaps they might have stopped for a moment and let me finish my arc and drive on, so I wasn't blocking not only their passage, but the entire road for all other vehicles?!        
 
I'm yearning for a bit of snow niceness about now.  Is that too much to ask?