Bread bags on your feet was apparently a thing. Not just my family’s desperate attempt to keep our feet dry in the snow.

Staring at the photographs from the enormous snowfall in Buffalo, I was reminded of the Blizzard of ‘78 in Massachusetts.

I was only seven years old at the time, but I remember it well.

My hometown of Blackstone and the surrounding towns of Lincoln, Smithfield, Woonsocket, and North Smithfield were the hardest hit, reporting more than 40 inches of snow.

I spent days outside with my father, shoveling trenches from the front door to the car, and from the car to the street. Truthfully, I was probably more of a nuisance than anything else, but I remember feeling like a man for the first time in my life.

We were ill-equipped for the winter, as was the case throughout most of my childhood. We wore old socks on our hands in lieu of mittens. Hand-me-down winter coats.

I didn’t own a pair of snow pants until my friends bought me a pair a few years ago for my birthday so I could stay warm at Patriots games.

I didn’t own a scarf until a girlfriend bought one for me in my twenties.

We didn’t own any winter boots, a fact that my evil stepfather would later use to drive a wedge between me and my father. Instead, we wore three or four pairs of socks and then wrapped our feet in bread bags before putting on our sneakers.

I thought this was something that only my family did, but when I mentioned the bread bags in a tweet last week, three people responded, saying they did the same thing as kids.

Bread bags used as waterproofing.

Apparently it was a thing.