For a class in a second year Journalism school, I had to write a story about the weather affecting someone. It was to be written as though it would be on the front page of a small town newspaper.

I was offended by this assignment because I think great writers come from the weirdest of places. They're everywhere. They don't have to live in a big city or have to have any affiliation with a club or newspaper or school in any way.

Even small town journalism is important to someone.

So in protest of this assignment, I decided to write a story about how the weather is affecting someone in the voice of a "small town" writer.

I recieved a 'C' on the assignment because I didn't a) understand the type of story I was supposed to be writing, b) employ any of the "standard techniques" for writing a news story, and c) the piece is just poorly written.

I thought that's what I supposed to do:

Recent wet weather, combined with freezing temperatures at night, has misshapen Halifax from a moderately-sized Canadian urban centre into an ice-covered moderately-sized Canadian urban centre.

Local meteorologists will tell you that when water is mixed with freezing temperatures, it will react by converting into ice. What they will not tell you is that I recently hurt myself, both physically and emotionally, because of the ice.

I have left close to three angry messages on the answering machine of local weather forecasters, yet they still refuse to acknowledge my accident. In response to their nihilistic bunkness, I will explain to you, through the medium of print, exactly why I’m so upset.

January is the cruellest month (or something like that).

On Monday, January the eleventh, at nearly three-thirty in the afternoon, I stopped watching a humorous episode of the Steve Harvey Show and began walking towards the bank machine at the student union building on the campus of Dalhousie University. The route I chose was to walk along Vernon Street until I got there.

It was cold out, so I made sure to wear a winter coat and my favourite toque. The toque displays the letters O.S.S.T.F. on it, referring to the Ontario high school teacher’s union.

While I walked at my regular power-walk pace, I stepped on some ice covered by fresh, light snow. My right leg flew into the sky, followed by my left. As I felt myself at the mercy of gravity, I reacted by extending my right arm to break my fall. It was no use. I hit the frozen sidewalk with a mighty thump. The bruises on the outside part of my right thy and on the centre of my elbow are a testimony to the force of the fall.

Unfortunately, the story gets worse.

Down on my luck, I laid on the sidewalk for a few brief seconds. My first order of business was to re-gather my thoughts. However, this became difficult when to my embarrassment, three illegally attractive high school girls were no less than two metres behind me, laughing.

My only reaction was to do something funny. The only funny thing I know how to do is impersonations of my mother. I broke up their laughter by asking in an old woman voice: “what time does Seinfeld come on at?”

Baffled, the girls humoured me with the fakest laughs I’ve heard since the episode of the Steve Harvey Show I watched a few minutes prior. They continued walking, and so did I.
Humiliated, I placed all the blame on local weather forecasters. If they can predict weather patterns so well, why can’t they predict me slipping on ice?