The Return of Mutha Naychaaaaaa

I, for one, have been saying that the winter of 2011 was going to be a very snowy, very extreme winter since August.

For once, I am right.

How was I able to tactfully deduce that New England was to have record snow fall at the tail end of 2010 into the new year?

Simple. Acorns.

Explain? Surely.

Every fall morning, as we trekked up to the bus stop, our whole neighborhood crew would stomp on the acorns that fell on our neighbor’s driveway. [Ah, the simple things that caused us such pleasure.] Being the very astute, and might I add publicly schooled, children that we were, we developed a scientific hypothesis that, to this day, has yet to fail me.

(Please note hypothesis in correct hypothesis statement format)

If there are a copious amount of acorns to fall from the Jenkins’ trees, then the following winter will “be a bad one” [think snow, and lots of it.]

This was very important to us, because with lots of snow comes lots of snowdays and that was something our town rarely saw.

Our small neighborhood cult carefully followed through with our experiment for years, and by senior year of high school, we had determined that our hypothesis was actually a scientific theory. [This is where you need to recall that a hypothesis becomes a theory once it has been proven true, scientifically] From then on, the amount of acorns were directly correlated with the amount of snow we got that winter, and that was that.

Fast forward to fall of 2010.

As I am leaving my parents house and enjoying my favorite season of Indian Summer, I drive by the Jenkins’ house, windows down and it happens.

An all too familiar noise. The same noise that filled me with glee as a five year old.

I heard the cracking of acorns.

Immediately I knew that this was going to be one of those winters.

After racing to my office to share my experience with someone, I soon realized that no one would understand what I was talking about. Even if I attempted to explain our neighborhood howcanyounotunderstanditsatheory logic, I realized that my co-workers would most likely look at me like I was loosing it.

Acorns? Really?!

I found myself reverting back to a traumatic childhood experience, when I tried to tell my mother that my childhood dentist had pulled out one of my teeth sans novacane, only to be sat down and told the difference between make-believe and reality. [side note: even as a 24 year old, I still believe that the tooth was pulled out un-ethically, and have other victims to corroborate my story.]

So, I decided not to share my story with anyone; that is except for my co-worker, Jackie.

Jackie is wonderful. I find she accepts me for my non-traditional ways of rationalizing things and often times even entertains the idea that some of my thought processes might actually be true.

So we made a bet.

I wagered based on the acorns (which said that we were getting snow, and lots of it); she wagered based on the Farmer’s Almanac and other “more reliable sources” (which said that this winter looked to be particularly mild.)

The stats thus far?

• December 2010 shared 20 inches of the fluffy stuff, while January 2011 dumped Massachusetts with 38.3 inches.
• February isn’t looking to be much better, with a storm coming tomorrow (that’s February 1, 2011) with the potential for 18+ inches of snow in some areas. Ew.
• There has been a snow storm every Tuesday through Thursday for the past 4 consecutive weeks.
• January has been the third snowiest month ever recorded in Massachusetts
• 49 of 50 United States have seen snow this season [[per usual, Florida is the problem child, right George W. Bush?!]

So for now, I am pretty confident in the fact that my acorn theory will live on, and even become more accurate than the Farmer’s Almanac….

Stay tuned, and get out your shovels.