You want winter musings? I'll give you your winter musings. Local writers who love the snow and cold have been waxing poetic on this page in recent weeks about the wonders of winter in Western Pennsylvania.

The people who have enjoyed those musings should probably stop reading now.

This Morning File is for those other readers, whom we estimate conservatively at 97 percent of the total, who have a harder time seeing the joys of winter.

If you're in that rare 3 percent with a smile on your face 60 hours after the snow began knocking out the power of your neighbors across the region, you may be saying, "Why all the hate, Mr. Snow Grump?" Um, let us count the ways:

• In a city with 1,031 miles of streets to be plowed, I guess someone has to live along mile No. 1,031 on the priority list, but that doesn't mean that person has to like it.

Yeah, I know I was supposed to be all caught up in the camaraderie of neighbors who jointly shoveled out our hilly half-block of Point Breeze -- which appears unlikely to receive a visit from a plow until March -- and the intersecting alley that would allow us access to the free world. But jokes at the expense of the city Public Works Department only take one so far on a Sunday morning.

• Ever try getting a teenage boy out of the house in the morning to do his share of shoveling? If you have a son who offers no resistance to the task, my congratulations on your years of fine parenting, from which you are now reaping the rewards.

As for the rest of us, the stress of the parent-child shoveling war is probably more likely to bring on a heart attack than performing the chore itself. So pick your poison -- grab the shovel or fight the kid, or do both and hit the kid with the shovel, or try to bury the teenager in the snow until the spring thaw. None of the choices, to my recollection, are found in Dr. Spock's parenting books.

• If there is an outer ring of hell that includes a rental shop of some sort, it would have to be one modeled after those at a ski resort.

Long lines of people in bulky clothes in a compact area, dealing simultaneously with wallets and paperwork and boots and skis and poles, and often with kids involved, and equipment that's unfamiliar, and every minute spent inside takes time away from the reason everyone's there -- to pay lots of money to get outside.

This is family fun? Well, maybe, compared to time spent shoveling or arguing over shoveling.

• I know the snow looks very nice at first. But then my dog gets out in it. And everyone else's dog. Then the color is no longer the same. Then the vehicles start making their mess. Before long, things aren't very pretty and have gone from a short-term positive on scenery to a net deficit of longer duration.

• Do you have any idea what the population of the Pittsburgh region would be if we didn't have weather like what's outside right now? When interviewing ex-Pittsburghers, I've found them far more put off by the winters here than by the economic climate.

You can say we're better off without the weather wimps. But some of them might actually have made a contribution here -- a life saved, a wonderful artistic performance, a clever bon mot at a dinner party -- if milder conditions had kept them in our midst.

• All winter long, we turn on the TV and see images from other cities -- like Miami during the Super Bowl -- of people enjoying the sunshine in their short-sleeved shirts. This just makes people around here feel worse by February than they already did. Such images should be banned by the Federal Communications Commission, or available only on a seven-week delay.

• Meteorologists. Nothing more need be said on that topic.

• There's all these people who complain about what other drivers are like in slippery conditions: "Oh, Pittsburgh people don't know how to drive in the snow!" Yet, something tells me that these complainers are actually the people I need to be afraid of when on the roads.

• Sometimes it's painful to get hit by a snowball. It can hurt to throw one, too.

I am haunted still by an act at age 13, being mischievous with friends, hurling a snowball at an innocent man walking across the street, hitting him square in the back of the neck like I couldn't do once in another hundred times of trying. He chased me for blocks, the broken snow sliding inside the back of his coat and shirt all the while, me running in terror of what he would do when catching me.

Finally, he gave up. I got off lucky, but shouldn't. I wonder to this day what my retribution will be. If you are reading this, sir, the boy with glasses who had uncharacteristically good aim on Oakland's Bouquet Street on a winter day in 1971 begs your forgiveness.

If there were no snow or winter, the devil couldn't tempt people to do such things.

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