Go ahead and tease us.

We delay school if the morning temperature dips below thirty-two degrees.

At the first flake of snow, we close local businesses, and the grocery store runs out of white bread.

We wear every item of winter clothing we own and still complain of the cold – anything below sixty degrees is unnatural, as everyone knows.

The kids are swaddled in layers of fall clothes, alternating who gets to wear the one pair of gloves and chasing snowflakes that melt before they reach the ground.

Yes, go ahead and tease us. Say we’ve never experienced a real winter.

It’s true, we haven’t. We bring up that one time in 1989 when there was over a foot of snow, like an isolated incident from thirty-five years ago serves as proof of winter resilience. I remember that day.

I was in first grade, posing with a lost tooth in front of our snow-covered red-flowered camelia, when my tooth fell to the ground and disappeared into a pillow of snow. The tooth fairy still delivered, though; she’s smart like that.

There have been other snows. About once a decade, it stays cold enough for flurries to stick, and we take pictures of beach dunes and house roofs bedecked in strange white fluffy stuff. We’re due for a good snow any year now. Any day.

And if it happens, don’t expect to drive on the secondary roads – not because they’ll be impassable, but because any road with an incline will be occupied by kids riding baking pans, trash can lids, and body boards down the street, trying their hands at “Carteret Sledding.” My advice? Get out there and join them.

But mostly, we get ice.

Our snow melts during the day then re-freezes at night, maybe with some sleet added for texture. This continues for a few days, creating layers of ice.

That ice is dangerous. Slippery, obviously, and harder to see than snow – it’s easy to misplace a foot and go sliding.

Which is exactly what you want for Carteret Ice Skating. For this activity, find an empty parking lot covered in two-day black ice.

Pull on a few pairs of pants, long sleeves and a sweater, your mom’s old scarf, a moth-eaten hat, and any sort of coat you own, preferably one with some tushy cushion. Mittens optional – share with your siblings.

Then the most important part: three to five pairs of thick socks.

Wearing only socks on your feet, scoot along the ice, keeping knees bent for a low center of gravity. Continue until either the socks or the pants soak through.

Last year, we had an epic ice storm, with icicles dripping from every surface – ice pine needles, ice pine cones, ice leaves, ice crepe myrtles, a winter wonderland for one day of prismatic light.

This year, I’m still hoping for some winter weather, even though the groundhog didn’t see his shadow. We have a month to go before spring, and one of our biggest winter storms came in March of 1980. So it’s not too late – cross your mittened fingers for February frozen fun!