An Old-Fashioned Snow Day

I don't know if you all can relate, but humor me in my walk down memory lane. Winter time was always an exciting time when I was a kid. Living in Indiana, the threat (hope?) of snow was always present. If we were lucky we'd get one or two good snows per winter and miss a day or two of school. And who can forget the blizzard of '78 when snow was 3-4 feet high and we missed school for a week?! Those were the days.

We'd wake up first thing in the morning and hang out by the TV set watching the school names scroll by. In my house, things were a tad different because we had a Teacher (my dad) living there. If our phone rang early in the morning on a snowy day it could only mean one thing. His schools had cancelled classes for the day. Now granted, he taught in a different school system from the one where we lived and where we kids went to school. But chances were good that if his system cancelled, we would too. When our school name finally made its way onto the TV screen (why did *our* school always take so long to make the list?) we'd jump for joy and Mom would slump down in her chair with a sigh of resignation. The really good days were when the weather was so bad that they called school off the night before and we could stay up past our bedtime. But those days were a very rare treat.

Now, my younger brother and sister were the adventurous sort. They saw snow as a challenge to be conquered. They couldn't wait to get all bundled up head to toe and go out into the snow to "play". According to them, I was an oddity. The idea of going outside in frigid temps to voluntarily play in wet snow *for fun* was just crazy to me. No thanks. I remember my mom making me go outside with my brother and sister because the fresh air was "good for me". As a mom, I realize now that she was probably going stir-crazy with us kids in the house and was hoping for a moment's peace.

Anyway, we'd play in the backyard building a snow fort and having a snowball fight or maybe making a snow man. We'd be out there until our noses and fingers were red and frozen (even inside the gloves and scarves). When we came in there'd be hot chocolate to help thaw us out. I remember playing board games and watching TV (this was before the days of VCR's and DVD players). One year when I was probably in 5th or 6th grade, I remember mom painting my fingernails when we had a day off school. It's funny the things you remember 30 years later.

These memories are fresh today because we've had one of those old-fashioned snow days today. They aren't very common anymore. Nowadays schools have adopted a "delay" policy rather than cancel the entire day of school. While "2-hour delays" are fairly common, an entire day off is rare. The weather has to be really bad for the school to be closed. But today the Indianapolis area got around a foot of snow covered with a layer of freezing rain (a.k.a. ice). Some of the outlying counties have snow emergencies where no one is allowed out on the roads. Even in the cities major attractions like universities, museums, libraries, malls, etc. are closed. Here's a picture of the front of our house this afternoon when it was still snowing...



So this morning I watched my kids jump for joy when they saw their school name scroll across the TV screen. Big J even whooped for joy like an eight-year-old when he saw his company post that they were staying closed today. And like my dad, I received the 5:30am phone call telling me not to go to school today. We went back to bed and slept in. We watched old movies on video tape, put together a jigsaw puzzle, and the boys played with their Legos. I didn't make the boys go outside to play in the snow (which wouldn't have been much fun with the freezing rain anyway). We literally just took the day off. Sometimes everyone needs to just do that.

Heaven help me, they just announced schools closed for tomorrow! Here we go again...