This Sunday, while Bowdoin students slumber in their beds, eagerly awaiting morning, the Maine state Easter Bunny will prepare to leave its burrow, bearing Cadbury eggs, pink saran wrap, and enough Peeps to rot the enamel right off a casserole dish. Hopped up on chocolate wrapped in lime-green foil, he will skip to thrust open the door, crash, fall, and lie with his crooked floppy ears prostrate on the floor. Because, while the Easter Bunny lies there surrounded in shards of pink hard-boiled eggs, his door will be forced shut by 12 inches of snow.
So, this Easter, I am sorry to say, there will be no hidden eggs destined to lie beneath the futon until they start to release carbon monoxide, no chocolate tulips that will be fed, foil and all, to the dog, because there will be no Easter Bunny. He will be frozen shut inside his hole, icing the bump on his head he got from crashing into the door, watching the Easter parade on NBC and the Rugrats Passover Special.
A grim image, you say? Look out your window.
It's hard to imagine that anything could possibly make the weeks following Spring Break any more difficult than they already are; but Mother Nature, with her typically cruel irony, has found a way. For the next week or so, a "wintry mix" of misery will melt Bowdoin students' Cancun memories and tans away. Not just rain, either. I would love to say that "April showers bring May flowers," but it looks like this month, "April snow will bring suicidal urges," as the age-old proverb goes.
Here at Bowdoin, we put up with a lot of bad weather; weather that makes the last scene of "The Perfect Storm" look like a dip in a warm bath. Bean Boots, Ugg boots, life jackets, North Face jackets, bulletproof vests, and earmuffs are just a mere sampling of the equipment we need to make it through a walk to Searles Hall. And just as we think we're through, just as we set the safety lock on our welding torches (good for prying open frozen doors), a Slushee falls on our heads.
This kind of weather isn't just annoying: It's spirit-crushing. For those of you who have been feeling a little more somber than usual, and who are starting to think that transferring to the University of the Virgin Islands might be a good move, don't send off that application quite yet. If everyone followed the impulses that bad weather blues can give you, there would be a mass exodus of Mainers to the Bahamas. Including the Easter Bunny.
To me, it seems that the best way to cure this sudden onset of frost funk is to simply ignore it. A few days ago, I saw Bowdoin students with their shoes off, throwing Frisbees on the Quad, reading on outdoor benches that haven't felt the touch of a human's backside since October, and taking happy, energetic walks to Rite Aid. Why should we choose to let some bad weather hinder this? We're Polar Bears! If you think that our arctic counterparts get weepy and cranky, talking about swimming up to South America, every time the temperature drops below 40, you're sorely mistaken. Take off your shoes. Get your Frisbee. Go outside. Grin and bear the pain; your feet will be numb soon.
This is the kind of attitude our campus needs to sport in times like these. One that doesn't stare out of the window of H&L wondering what could have been, but one that goes outside, looks up, and swallows a wintry Slushee whole and says, "That was delicious!" One that digs around snow drifts until it finds a small, hidden wooden door with a picture of an egg drawn on it, and pries it open, rescuing the Maine state Easter Bunny (who, at this point, is eating his feelings in the form of pastel jelly beans). One that stands triumphantly as it watches the now-slightly pudgier bunny hop into the horizon, slicing through the "wintry mix."
And because it looks like Brunswick will be in the midst of this kind of weather for another week or so, and Easter is coming just around the corner, we'd better straighten up and turn over a new leaf. Because if anyone wants their Peeps on Sunday, we have to start digging the bunny out now.