Archive: Opinions

I was in a restaurant in Collegetown with my cousin last week when a hailstorm exploded outside.  I could see the hail bouncing off the concrete sidewalk, even with my glasses off, so pretty good-sized hail.  All of a sudden a waitress burst forth from the kitchen, squealing with delight and doing a happy dance to rival Snoopy all the way to the front door, screaming, "It's snowing!  It's snowing!" with a big smile on her face.

We gently corrected her -- we told her it was hailing.

"Its hailing!  It's hailing!" became her new mantra.

Then as we watched in amazement she ran outside to be pelted by fairly good sized ice cubes, and still squealing with joy (or so I surmised, since she was outside and I could only see her mouth move, but couldn't hear).  When she came back in we chatted with her a bit.

You have probably figured it out, but our new happy friend was a Cornell freshman from Los Angeles who had never seen snow before.  She told us it was supposed to snow the next morning, and despite it being very early on a Saturday for any college student, she was setting her alarm so she wouldn't miss it.

As we age we become jaded, and it is harder to feel innocent joy.  Sure, we feel joy, but not the kind of unbounded joy we did when we were small.  My cousin recalled the first snow when he was in elementary school outside of Boston, and how all the kids would flock to the classroom window to watch it come down.  And I remembered visitors from the midwest who had never seen an ocean before, and the wide-eyed wonder they displayed.

That a person who is smart enough to get into Cornell can still feel that kind of innocent joy was uplifting.  It was impossible not to get caught up in her wonder and enthusiasm.  It was fun.  It was charming.  And it was exciting.

And it made me a little less jaded, if only for a little while.  We should all let loose and feel that kind of joy, no matter how old or jaded we become.  It feels good.

v11i41