Snow Days, Murder Mysteries and Creativity

Snow days are great days for creativity. It’s like showering or a vacation – the snow upsets the rhythm of the ordinary and forces you to meet new challenges. My neighbors digging through the roughly one foot of snow we got in this most recent storm might have some disagreements with me on that count, but hey, I dug through it also, so let your mind wander.

Today, I spent the early evening trudging through the snow with my son while he imagined us being chased by bears and mountain lions that hated to have snowballs thrown at them. Understandable. I envisioned the ground underneath where we play baseball as hibernating, waiting for the snow to melt and coming alive with the first pitch of spring.

One snowy day, when I was much younger, my cousins and I started recording a an audio improvisational play using a boom box and a cassette tape that we called “The Snowy Day.” It started as a three kids talking about a snowy day, and then evolved into a crime story. I recall it was a murder mystery, which was likely the result of too much television. Crime, after all, is conflict while nice play on a snowy day is not.