It used to be that when it snowed,
the kids went out and tracked up the yard,
and the snowmen went up all around town.
We got a good foot of wet sticky snow the other day,
perfect for making balls.
I saw one snowman yesterday,
and it dawned on me that it was the only one I had seen.
Is this a dying tradition? Do kids still do this where you live?
I thought Calvin and Hobbs could keep it alive,
but perhaps kids are too fat and lazy to go outside anymore. :
nope, no snowpeople on my block.
just kiddin.
kids are LAZY today…
They’re probably too busy with the Snoman Maker game on X-Box.
I love Calvin’s snowmen. Some of my favorites aren’t on that link but they are all hilarious.
I will make it a point to teach my boys to make snowmen. No hills around here. Sledding would
not be an option. But I dream of making some snow forts with them.
Now that you mention it, I have noticed a distressing dearth of snowmen…I mean snowpeople…in my neighborhood. I tried to toss my son out in the snow that we got but he disappeared since he’s only about 2 1/2 feet tall at the moment. After that he didn’t seem all that interested in the cause of reducing snowpeople genocide.
Note to Child Protective Services: I was just kidding about the tossing of the kid into the snow.
I have seen a few snowmen, but what surprises me is that there are no kids out shoveling. If we had this much snow when I was a kid I would be rich!. Kids are lazy today. The computer, video games and the parents that plop their kids in front of it have a lot to do with it. What-ever.
Another twelve inches here today??? God help us.
Yeh, when I was a kid we made snowmen, snowforts for snowball fights and even a few bad snow sculptures. Then came the teen years and we would pray for snow so we could shovel snow off people’s roofs… now there is where the money is at and its a helluva lot easier than shoveling snow off the sidewalks etc. ;) We used to make a couple hundred in cash “each” per day when a big snowstorm like those hitting some areas now came through.
I agree with Mikeypederson, kids are glued to their game sets today… :(
When I was a kid you couldn’t keep me out of the snow. Of course now I live in Southtown and Mr Heatmiser does not let it snow often - though we did have a few inches this year not enough to build a proper snow … errr … person.
That said, I think part of the over all problem with kids being indoors this days is that parents don’t make their kids stay outside anymore. I can remember wanting to come in and my mom saying “stay outside”. After a fashion you get used to it and you don’t want to be inside. Make kids stay outside and they will find something to do.
Anyway, I force my kids out the door and don’t let them in. And I don’t let my kids play video games during the week. That’s a weekend only activity, kind of like Saturday morning cartoons. We also don’t have cable or high speed internet access. Lots of beer though. 
I would if we had snow!!! Barely any snow on the lawn and we got about 2 inches of rain yesterday. Expected to get another couple inches of rain today and tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, I live in NH! I guess Texas is getting all our snow this year…enjoy you guys!
My daughter only made 1 snow person this year, but the snow hasn’t really been the right (usually dry and fluffy, not wet and packing snow). Before Christmas we got some rain and freezing rain which turned the snow we had left into hard packed icy-snow. We made a kick-ass fort though! ;D We cut blocks of snow and piled them up like bricks and had our selves a fort at least 8x8 and about 3.5 feet high, complete with chairs and benches made out of snow.
Not many snow people around town, but there has been plenty of sledding in my back yard.
I live in the drunk yuppieville part of the city, and there were plenty of snowpeople during the last storm (before they were covered by 2-3 feet of accumulation). So at least the 20-30 year olds are keeping the tradition alive.
Okay… gotta say it. Is snow"man" one of those words now…
I figured you would have to say it 
This one is for you Dean:
No idea, but my daughter likes to make snow women and snow girls. We’ve made plenty of snowmen in the past though…
Calvin & Hobbes snowman gallery… love the 4th one down.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa/zzaran/calvin.html
;D When I went to the Calvin’s Snowman link it cracked me up, I remember seeing them in the paper and laughing then… I’m tempted to make a set playing monkey in the middle with one of their heads just for shyts and grins. But… we’re going to my sister’s and then maybe a movie… Wolfman. 8)
Akr71, I like the snowshark and the one where all the snowpeople are blocking the driveway.
Around here it seems it’s the older college aged kids making snowmen because the snow reminds them of when they were a kid. Nowadays, kids are way too lazy, they don’t do “kid” things anymore, instead their parents keep them busy with stupid shit like football, baseball, soccer, after school activities…
Kids can’t be kids anymore, they have to be kept busy at all times in order to maintain “normalcy”. Instead of climbing trees, making soapbox derby cars, building bridges in your ditch, riding bikes, mud running bikes through big puddles, going sledding, exploring in the woods, like I used to do when I was a kid. And that wasn’t long ago! I’m only 26!
Things have really changed a lot in the internet age. It’s really a shame.
EDIT: I guess it’s not necessarily limited to the internet, but advancement in technology like computers, video game systems and such. I had regular Nintendo when I was a kid and loved it, but I didn’t spend all my time on it…I spent the night at friend’s houses and did things that little kids should be doing…and not doing anything related to school…I left school at school.
I think there’s been an unfortunate rise in a combination of “stranger danger” fears and helicopter parenting. I mean, I get the stranger danger fears, it’s part of my day to day job, but really folks, the worry you really need to focus on is your kid being bullied or harassed.
With the parenting stuff - so much of the rigidly planned stuff seems to be born of fear that if you don’t do these things with your kids - you’re a bad parent and the kids will end up going to crappy schools, hooked on drugs and shanked in the pokey by age 22 and its all your fault!
My favorite statistic I’ve seen…
I’m not completely accurate, but a group took a poll of parents asking them what percentage of child kidnappings were stranger on stranger type. The average answer was around 50% or so. The actual number, < 5%. TV and media sensasionalize the whole thing. If you look at Amber Alerts nowadays (and I’m not knocking the system, it’s great and I’ve seen it work in person several times) it’s always a child custody issue.
I know several people putting their Three year old in sports! C’mon, let him be a kid and play in mud and do kid stuff. I agree with all the posts on here talking about letting kids be kids. It’s no more dangerous now than it was back then, it’s just our 24/7 media outlets that run continuous loops on this crap.
Rant over.
Indeed, it ends up being that about 100 or so out of over 200,000 abductions per year are the classic stranger danger abduction scenario.
From the statistics that I’ve seen compiled over the past few years, right now it is the safest time to be a kid in the past ~50 years.
This makes me think of the kids class they have at my kung fu school and how useful of a skill that really would be for a young kid to have, being bullied around at school. The kid wouldn’t be bullied for very long. There’s a couple, probably, 5-7 year old kids that go there and if they keep it up will probably be pretty good at it when they reach middle school when kids are bullied the most. Don’t get the wrong idea, someone in kung fu isn’t going to go around looking for fights. That’s for tae kwan do hotheads.