Snow Days

The forecast for my family on the East Coast is calling for snow yet again. At this rate, it looks like winter might be putting up a fight until she’s dragged off kicking and screaming by our good friend, April.

But then again, it means that there’s another chance for a snow day!

Ah, snow days!

Back in the days before robocalls (although I must admit that this is the coolest one ever), you sat on your pillow with your ear pressed up against the radio… waiting… waiting… until… WAHOOOOooooooo!

The next thing you knew, you were jumping on the bed! Making snow angels! And sledding until your feet were so cold that Mom was sure to find your toes in the laundry.

And for me, what made it all the sweeter was the knowledge that my teachers were absolutely, positively, miserable about the whole thing. I could picture them in their school basement apartments cursing the sky before they went back to thumbing through student files, muttering about sentence diagrams, and dreaming up twenty-page lists of obscure dates in history.

“Take that, Teachers! The snow gods have smiled on the lowly pupil today — Hallelujah!” I would shout and make yet another snow angel for good measure.

Fast-forward ten years after graduating from high school, and snow days were a distant memory. Then one November I spent a week visiting my sister, a newly-minted teacher in Colorado.

Well, very early one morning the telephone rang. The next thing I knew, a “WAHOOOOoooooo!” rang through the house. Apparently, a big storm had blown in overnight, and it was…

a snow day!

Well, we jumped on the bed! We made snow angels! We went sledding! And I felt like an eight-year-old again. Then halfway through my third cup of cocoa, it hit me. I had spent a snow day… with a teacher!

Could I have been wrong all along? Was it possible that old Mrs. Coy jumped on her bed those blustery January mornings? Could Mr. Engle have stomped outside to make snow angels? Did Mr. Saucer spend all afternoon on his toboggan?

To think — if these questions had the slightest potential to be answered in the affirmative, then it was even possible that those teachers actually lived in homes of their own…

My world would never be the same.

PROMPT: Have you ever had a snow day? How did it feel? What did you do? Did you hold any particular (or peculiar) beliefs about the teachers in your life? Okay, maybe I’m the only one. But you can also check out the picture book, Teacher from the Black Lagoon, by author Mike Thaler and illustrator Jared Lee for some fun inspiration. WAHOOOOoooooo!