I was shovelling my driveway this morning and during a pause, thought to myself, has the snow ever been this deep? We often harken back to our youth in times like this. Why is that? I think we like to wax nostalgia since it brings to mind the carefree times we often enjoyed. In our adult years there are so many responsibilities that we don’t have time for fun. Example; as a youth you couldn’t get those piles of snow high enough; to build the biggest fort, the longest tunnel or just simply to climb. In our adult years our only thought is ‘will it ever end?’, ‘can it get any higher’, ‘whatever happened to global warming?’. The point is that it’s just not fun anymore.
I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of books… nobody develops characters, in my opinion, better than P.D. James. Read any of the ‘Adam Dalgliesh’ novels to see what I mean.
P.S. “Wax nostalgia” is not normally a phrase I would use but I heard it mentioned on TV the other day and thought it would be cool to use it somewhere. Ditto for “harken”.
the dan blog 
I think you are missing a step. When we are young we look at the snow banks and think ‘fun’. Then, as a middle-aged individual we think ‘work’. But there is one more step. Most adults today pass a point where the snow banks are again seen as ‘fun’, not fun for us, but fun for the kids. These elderly individuals come in two types: those who love to see the young playing in the snow and those who say “those damn kids knocked all the snow on my freshly shovelled driveway!” Daniel Grignon, you fall under this step, but which type of elderly individual are you? Hint: there is a reason that phrase is in quotation marks.
As I recall, I didn’t like them making a mess but I wasn’t about to stop them having fun… I’m not a curmudgeon 🙂
As I recall, it was I who stopped you from saying anything. Therefore you are certainly a curmudgeon (i.e. elderly individual). 🙂