But they haven't put their mittens on

[venta]

Pottering around in the snow yesterday, I observed a number of snowmen (and one snowwoman, and one ten-foot-tall snowbehemoth, and a rather lovely snowdog). Almost all were built to the crazy three-ball snowperson pattern. When I were a lad child, snowmen were made out of two balls of snow.

When did this madness involving an abdomen come in? Am I right to blame it largely on Calvin? That's Calvin of "and Hobbes" fame, not the guy who founded Calvinism, who probably thought playing the snow was far too frivolous.

I also note that, in the absence of coal being readily available, the go-to objects for snow-eyes are plastic supermarket milk bottle tops. Mostly semi-skimmed, though I did see one wall-eyed snowman who was full-fat on his left-hand side. Carrots are still big news in the snow-nose world.

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Really? Well, that explains why they're called tetrapaks.

Can you drink it from the carton without mishap? I'd have expected it to lead to all sorts of disasters. (I mean, above and beyond the usual run of carton-drinking mishaps.)

[zotz]

The usual cause of mishaps was somebody flattening an empty by stamping and discovering that it wasn't. Spectacularly amusing, depending on your personal identity relationship to that somebody.

They could overflow if you squeezed them, so generally you tried not to.

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

They were in many ways better than block-shaped cartons. You needed scissors, but they were much easier to get open. You would grasp them along the flat lip (rear, in the picture) between finger and thumb so they'd be balanced to tip and pour.