This morning I had to drive the six blocks to work. It was gloomy, gray, rainy, and raw. When lunchtime rolled around, I was tired of sitting in the office staring at email and talking on the telephone, so I wanted to walk back home for lunch. But when I got outside, it was snowing.

Snow, I thought. Blah.

I decided that I had better drive the car back right then and put it in the parking garage, in case there was enough snow to make the roads slippery. So much for my lunchtime walk. I walked over to the car feeling low, and just as I arrived at the car a snowflake landed on the driver’s side window. It was huge, as snowflakes go, perhaps an eighth of an inch across. It was fluffy and fat and white, and I could clearly see its six outstretched arms.

Wow, I thought.

I got inside the car, and looked at the snowflake from the inside for a moment. It looked as if its crystalline structure was fantastically complex, but it was really too small for me to see clearly without a magnifying glass. Then I started the car and drove off to the parking garage, completely forgetting about the snowflake until now.