82KYLE WRAYVICE PRESIDENT ENROLLMENT MANAGEMENT & MARKETING

Seriously? The last fright-ful weather we had around here was in 2010. Is it just me or did it seem like we had colder weather and a lot more snow when we were kids? Do you remember what it was like before the Xbox 360 and Twitter? Typically, when it snowed you went outside, fired up your sled and rode for hours, or had a snowball fight until you couldn’t feel any extremity. Your ears and nose hurt so bad, you ran to the bathroom to run hot water over them. Big mistake!

There were the times we had really cold football games where you actually con-sidered committing the fashion faux pas of wrapping your lower torso in a trash bag to cut the wind. When is the last time it was cold enough to do that?

Now that I’m writing this I fully expect there to be a blizzard in the next three weeks that’ll cause this part of this article to be irrelevant. No matter what time of year it is, when I come down with a cold or sinus problems, my mother always says,

“That stuff is going around.” To which I reply, “It can’t always be going around.” Can it?

Maybe she’s right. What I mean is this: Without the cold weather to kill some of the stuff we are all allergic to, it’s not that it comes and goes, it’s that it never leaves! Is it global warming? The rise in the aver-age temperature of the earth’s atmosphere over the last 100 years? Who knows? We should ask Santa what’s happening at the North Pole. That might give us a hint.

Change happens. The types of Christmas gifts have transitioned over the years. Traditions of fruit in Christmas stockings may have originated in a world where chil-dren were raised in post-Great Depression homes and an apple in the toe of your stocking was considered a treat. New Converse tennis shoes or an electric foot-ball game transitioned into Nikes and an Atari video game system.

Today, Apples are given at Christmas all right, but of a completely different vari-ety. The electronics craze, fueled by social media networking, instant picture publi-cation and the Internet, have driven all of the “i” devices to be at the top of many Christmas lists. And if you haven’t priced these pieces of modern technology, hold on to your Santa hats … and your wallets.

All of us probably had that certain rel-ative who, instead of purchasing the cool, trendy gift, knitted you the green and pink socks or the brown and yellow scarf with dangling fringe. You could tell as soon as you saw the rectangular-shaped box that was only a few inches tall that it wasn’t the Evil Knievel motorcycle, the foot-ball and tee set or the Coleco Electronic Quarterback you wrote Saint Nick about at Thanksgiving.

But in today’s world, that all-too-famil-iar rectangular box does not have to be a harbinger of bad news.

OSU gear makes wonderful gifts.Orange hoodies, coaches’ polos, Pistol

Pete dresses, OSU boots, jackets and sweatshirts all make great gifts any fan would want to open on Dec. 25. Plus, they fit nicely into those aforementioned rect-angular boxes! Although, with the not-so-frightful weather we’ve been experiencing, a nice OSU beach towel, flip-flops or bikini/swim trunks might be in order.

If you are like me, some of your favor-ite Christmas mornings were determined not by the gifts you received but by ones you gave or memories made. And if I knew there was a big round piece of fruit in the toe of my stocking that hung by the fireplace, I always hoped it was an Orange.

The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since we’ve no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

DECEMBER 2012