A little lesson for the Midwest
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Oh, you loopy, loveable midwesterners. You are a classic paradox.
Hardy and strong, you bravely face the endless muggy summers filled with heat, heat, more heat, and mosquitoes. You cheerfully take your kids to the park on days so hot that one actually sweats in a cold shower. You are out jogging in air that is 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity.
Yes. With smiles on your faces.
And yet, when the mere possibility of a few inches of snow is before you, you abandon all logic. You run to the grocery store and hastily clear the shelves of bread, eggs, milk, and toilet paper. You preemptively salt your driveways. You stockpile the firewood and hunker down with quilts to worship the weatherman on t.v.
And then, in a panic, you declare a snow day and cancel school.
Before the snow has actually, you know, fallen.
Well, my not-so-hardy winter friends, let me give you a little lesson. When it snows like THIS, there should, indeed, be a snow day:
(Our front yard in Boston, circa 2005)
Not when it snows like THIS:
Our front yard, about ten minutes ago
Any questions?
[All this excitement, by the way, led one of my children, who shall remain nameless, (*cough*Chase*cough*) to wake up at 4:30 a.m., and not be able to fall back asleep. That naturally led him to wake his siblings at, say, 4:43 a.m. And, of course, none of them would go back to sleep. I blame you, crazy midwest people. Thanks a lot.]
Hardy and strong, you bravely face the endless muggy summers filled with heat, heat, more heat, and mosquitoes. You cheerfully take your kids to the park on days so hot that one actually sweats in a cold shower. You are out jogging in air that is 95 degrees with 80 percent humidity.
Yes. With smiles on your faces.
And yet, when the mere possibility of a few inches of snow is before you, you abandon all logic. You run to the grocery store and hastily clear the shelves of bread, eggs, milk, and toilet paper. You preemptively salt your driveways. You stockpile the firewood and hunker down with quilts to worship the weatherman on t.v.
And then, in a panic, you declare a snow day and cancel school.
Before the snow has actually, you know, fallen.
Well, my not-so-hardy winter friends, let me give you a little lesson. When it snows like THIS, there should, indeed, be a snow day:
Not when it snows like THIS:
Any questions?
[All this excitement, by the way, led one of my children, who shall remain nameless, (*cough*Chase*cough*) to wake up at 4:30 a.m., and not be able to fall back asleep. That naturally led him to wake his siblings at, say, 4:43 a.m. And, of course, none of them would go back to sleep. I blame you, crazy midwest people. Thanks a lot.]
