Snow Days Then and Now...

"Working" at home today sheltered from Winter Storm Juno; work gave us laptops and as long as there's internet we're expected to work.  So, snow days don't have quite the same luster they once did.  Now our only hope for a day off is to lose electricity.  I have good book and there's plenty light out, but with a freezer full of ice cream (which is always), the accompanying anxiety that it's slowly melting is torture too much.

We knew the office would be closed by 10am yesterday.  Twenty years ago I'd wake up early to turn on 1350am for WNLK to fire up the "Storm Center" (I always imagined a guy huddled in a bunker under 12 ft. of snow broadcasting to a wrecked civilization when I heard that description, but that was overactive preteen imagination).  Very often we'd hear "Westport, closed...Wilton, closed...Norwalk public and parochial, one hour delay!"  It was enough to make a 13 year-old cry.

But, we knew to stick around because what was a delay sometimes later became a closing.  When then happened, I'd go back to sleep, or go make hot chocolate.  The days would be snowball fights with the kids on the street or sledding at Naramake/Nathan Hale.  Often snow turned to rain later on in the day, and our socks, mittens, and hats would be soaked, our skin rubbed raw red.

Today I'm bone-dry in an overheated city apartment, just feeling a little too safe.  I wonder where kids would go that had snow days today?  Mine would be stuck in a cramped 1br.  There isn't any sledding around here.  Saddly, not back home either - the middle school athletic fields seem to be in the middle of an expansion, and so the city's best hill might not be there anymore.

My most memorial snowday was senior year in high school; we all thought "Oh thank God, no school, no wrestling practice"....then phone rings, coach says "be at the school at 9:30" .  So while the rest of the town was enjoying hot cocoa and sledding, I was running in the C-house hallway.  Was that even legal?  I was cutting weight and probably needed the workout, but I was all the more grumpy.

The last time I almost got in a fight was when Washington was hit by a blizzard in early 2003.  The city was shut down, including most of the college's cafeterias.  None of us had food in our dorms, so roves of students were roaming the snowy streets like zombies.  I got a call from my former roommate that Panda Cafe was open, and when we got there the line was out the door.  Everyone was a little on edge and I was starving.  A couple tried to cut us, asking if they were next "AFTER US" I glared at them.  Later a guy tried to take our order when it came out, saying he was in front of us so it had to be his (I knew he was behind us).  I literally almost choked-him out, but instead told him/the restaurant worker to check the order number, and was vindicated.  Becca told me she heard him complaining to his friends about "some a-hole up there".  I didn't care, I just wanted my Chinese...