If I only could have implemented a brilliant idea I had four decades ago I might be on the board of directors of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today. Or maybe Bill Gates would be on the board of my foundation.

My inspiration was to invent snow that would fall every day of the winter, but stick only on mountains and in grassy fields. Each tiny flake would be designed to vaporize the second it touched pavement! My revolutionary frozen precipitation was going to transform winter. Necessity is the mother of invention, and in my world, altering the nastiest, longest season was an absolute necessity.

As a youth, I hated the dark months with a passion. Winter meant glacial mornings at the bus stop, with biting winds that froze just-washed hair into skinny, brittle, frozen dreadlocks.

No one in our family ever took up skiing, a seemingly expensive hobby requiring treks to faraway mountains over slick and often rutted highways and byways. Snowboarding didn’t exist. Snowmobiling? It was already frigid and miserable outside. Why fill a deafeningly loud vehicle with expensive fuel so you could ride around and get even colder?

I did like playing hockey, but unfortunately excelled at it only when it was played on streets with a ball rather than on ice with a puck.

But the absolute worst thing about winter was the snow. It ruined everything. It made traveling dangerous. It also made ponds freeze unevenly, which killed the hockey games. Even its one supposed advantage, creating an occasional unscheduled day off from pencils, books and teachers’ dirty looks, had its downside: accumulate enough “snow days” and you’d still be sitting in school on June 28, while tanned kids down south were riding bikes, building tree forts, playing baseball and swimming ”“ and had been doing all that and more for nearly a month.

The biggest problem with common, run-of-the-mill, sent-by-Mother-Nature snow was disposing of it. Whether the depth of the white covering on the driveway measured an inch or three feet it had to be removed by shoveling, a responsibility that in our family fell to able-bodied adults and growing boys. On occasion my brother and I worked nearly as hard at clearing the snow as we did complaining about having to do it. That drove our parents crazy, since it’s likely they each were tossing three large shovelfuls of the white stuff for every small one we lifted.

When we finally finished clearing our huge driveway ”“ which was all of about four car lengths long ”“ our dad would further heighten our resentment by making us shovel the walk for the sweet, old lady across the street. Then he’d compound our hatred of him by steadfastly refusing to accept any and all monies she offered to pay him and his boys for their labor. And when we asked him why we couldn’t take monetary compensation for our backbreaking toil, he’d respond, “On general principles,” which was that less-enlightened era’s equivalent of, “Because I said so!”

Aside from having my birthday fall in the middle of it, the only good thing about winter was counting the days until spring. If only I could have fabricated my special snow! The skiers and snowmobilers could have at it every day, but the rest of us wouldn’t need to waste our precious time and energy on snow removal. Plus, treacherous driving would be a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, my cutting-edge innovation never got past the daydreaming phase, a state of affairs I attribute to having been consistently placed in “modified” high school science classes. Some skeptical intimates point out my lifelong aversion to hard work ”“ particularly when it requires patience and follow-through ”“ may have played a role, but that just leads me to wonder why I maintain contact with such cynical misanthropes.

Ultimately, my failing to reinvent snow was a good thing. True, had that dream become reality I’d probably be world-famous and fabulously wealthy. But with fortune and notoriety come drawbacks. Had I achieved fame and fortune at a young age, I’d be a mess today. I’d probably be sporting a ridiculous hairpiece, addicted to multiple illegal substances, starring in a humiliating reality TV show, and paying alimony to a half-dozen shameless ex-wives, at least one of whom would be half my age and/or a member of the Kardashian clan.

In retrospect I’m better off in my current reality, which includes shoveling the driveway on snowy days with the aid of my own offspring. It’s too bad there isn’t a little, old lady across the street, though. Just once I’d love having the opportunity to tell my complaining kids they were shoveling her walk “on general principles.”

And if anyone’s wondering, it’s only 100 days until the start of spring.

— Andy Young teaches in Kennebunk and lives in Cumberland. He has never taught a science class.