Sobriquet 70.2: Snow Day

Thanks to the half-foot of snow left by the storm that swept through much of the northeastern part of the country last night and this morning, I did not have to go to work today. At 33, I rarely find that snow days excite me the way they once did, when I would quite literally leap with joy upon hearing the name of my school among the list of closings dutifully read by the local disk jockey, but, I have to admit, I retain enough of that sublime childhood pleasure to have gleefully shouted "Snow Day!! to myself this morning. I even tweeted it.

But as much as I loved snow days as a child and as much as I continue to enjoy them as an educator, I react differently to them today than I once did. For example, as a child, I would eagerly get out of bed at precisely the time I would normally hem and haw about waking up for school, pick up my snow shovel (often running down my family's un-shoveled driveway), call my friend, and begin walking door to door offering to clear neighborhood driveways for money. I could usually earn a solid thirty or forty dollars for my troubles (which, of course, meant that I could buy a new Ramones, Sonic Youth, or Clash album). Today, I fret over digging my car out of the snow. Likewise, as a child, I rarely gave a thought to how a snow day might affect my schooling; today, I worry about having to make changes to the syllabus I worked so hard to put together. In other words, there's something about snow days that remind me -- more poignantly than pretty much anything else -- that I'm a grown-up now.

In the end, though, a snow day is a snow day, and as one of the most beloved of life's little gifts, it's nothing to take for granted. So I blogged about it. I guess that's another change: as a child, I would never have passed up the opportunity for some late-night snowball tossing to sit down and blog about snow days...