Snow days are pure magic for school age children. Especially in Minnesota. They seem to have so few, in spite of our robust winters. I’m not sure if it’s because we have the fastest and most efficient snowplow crews in the nation, or that our school wardens (superintendents) are so leery of giving “reprieves.” Maybe if they attached ankle bracelets to each child so they could find them again once school resumed and force them back on the bus to the prison of learning, sort of a revamped “no child left behind” program, then they might let the little inmates out for storms more often.
Snow days are not magical for people with pets. Of course I can understand why the pups don’t want to get up in the morning from their cozy, warm bed and traipse out into a snowdrift with fifty mile an hour winds making their fur stand on end, just to pee. Especially when they can go pee on the soft carpet in the warm house in the corner where it goes unnoticed until someone steps in it and screams bloody murder!
Snow days are nice for work-at-home parents. They can type away at their computers, sip at a cup of cocoa, glance occasionally out the window at the winter wonderland and bask in the fact that they don’t have to bundle up, scrape their car off, and maneuver through salted snowdrifts and crawling traffic. Then reality hits them squarely between the ears as their kids scream excitedly that “there’s no school!” and they realize there will be no quiet time working at the computer.
Snow days are very good for chiropractors. They don’t have to advertise for business. Patients just show up on the doorstep, bent painfully in half, a shovel gripped in one hand and cash in the other.
Snow days make it slightly more inconvenient to grill out or Christmas shop. But we’re Minnesotans. A little snow isn’t going to stop us from living life to the fullest: grilling, driving, shopping, or for those slightly less Minnesotan, sitting in the comfy chair and watching a Christmas Hallmark movie.
Have a great Snow Day!
Elaine Pratt says
You left out two other fun challenges of snow days….
1)persuading your school-age children that this doesn’t mean “A whole day of video games…hurrah!”
2) persuading your teenage driver that a snow day doesn’t mean jump in the car and go meet your friends at the local hangout…defeating the whole purpose of the ‘stay at home so you can be safe until the plows go through’ which is I THINK one of the reasons for a snow day.
Go figure!?!
(As my 11 year old reminds me, ‘there’s no shame in therapy’)
Elaine