DO YOU REMEMBER?

Snow days-

Bing Crosby may have dreamed of a white Christmas, but if you were a kid who lived where it snowed, you dreamed of white school days. It was an unexpected vacation, maybe one day, maybe a week; it all depended on how much of the white stuff fell from the sky.

The ritual that began a snow day was a tad unnerving. You would wake up to find the ground (and especially the roads) covered with a fresh, and hopefully significant enough coating of white powder. Nervously, you would turn on the radio or TV and search for undoubtedly the best thing ever to be broadcast (in the mind of a child, at least,) the listings of school closures. On a good day, the list was extensive, meaning that there was a very good chance your school district would be mentioned. One by one, you would listen, holding your breath, tensing up at the name of every district that started with the same letter as yours. Hopefully it would come quickly but it usually didn’t and the wait could seem like an eternity. If they didn’t mention your district, it was like being punched in the gut, a disappointment that lingered throughout the day. And to make matters worse, sometimes they added names to the list each time around, building your hopes sky high before they dropped like a thawed icicle. But oh, if they said that long-anticipated word you yearned to hear, it suddenly became a magnificent day, yours to do with whatever you pleased.Normally one had to be sick (or be an expert at feigning it) to get an unexpected day off from school. The problem was, once you said you were sick, you were required to stay in bed, couldn’t have friends over, etc. A snow day was wonderfully different; it was a day to bundle up and play in your freshly blanketed town. You could spend the day building jolly snowmen and impenetrable snow forts, have snowball fights with your friends (and enemies,) or engage in just about any other sub-freezing activity you could think of. And should the missed school day involve any scheduled testing or report that was due, it was like a last minute stay of execution from the Governor, a miracle from above. Well, except for one little detail. You usually had to make the day up at the end of the year if you surpassed the allotted amount of snow days for the year.

That would be something to groan about for another day. For now at least, maybe even for tomorrow, you were free to play, free to get your feet wet and your nose red. And you milked it for all it was worth.