I don't have an attitude problem. I'm just melting down.

From Alfred’s journal

The thaw came two days after Christmas and the snowman in the Harlan yard went over sideways by noon. The children had given him a carrot and a scarf and some kind of expression, and as the face slid the expression went sour, which was not his doing at all. Switch said he looked furious. I said I don't have an attitude problem, I'm just melting down, and Switch laughed hard enough to drop the pen. For years I thought a face was a report on the inside. A snowman has no inside, and still the whole street read him as angry at something. I keep thinking about the carrot, which did not move, and about how far it fell before anyone adjusted what they thought of him.