In which we discuss… oh who the hell cares IT’S A SNOW DAY!!!
I want to take you on a trip with me. Not so much back in time as it is back into the memories of your childhood. I want you to picture yourself around the age of 12. I want you to remember waking up in the morning – it could be any day of the week bar Saturday and Sunday. You don’t know why, but something, some hidden sense in the back of your mind begins to tingle. You know that today is a very special day. As you open your eyes, you catch a glimpse of the vast whiteness that billows just outside your window. Excitedly, you throw off the covers and leap off of the bed, rushing to wherever the nearest TV is. Oh God, could it be? Could it possibly be? You grab the remote from whatever poor soul had it before you and change the channel to the one show that you usually skip over: the local news.
But that is on an ordinary day. Most days are filled with boring things like government and stocks and local shootings. This is different. For today there is a little scrolling bar on the bottom of the screen. As the scrolling continues, you curse your luck that it is in the middle of the alphabet. Why couldn’t it be an A name so the suspense could end? But in a way, the suspense is part of the fun. Like waiting to open a Christmas gift. Then you see it. Could it be? Were those words really possible? Yes! Oh yes, its true! Your school just flashed across the screen next to that most joyful and jubilant of words: closed! My friends, today is a snow day.
We all remember that feeling. It’s the best thing ever, really. The night before you went to bed resigned at having to get up at six in the morning to do your routine rituals in order to prepare yourself for another day of soul tearing drudgery. But this winter wonderland, this sudden whiteout has saved you from that. And, of course, you know what that means. An entire day, starting right the hell now, of playing video games.
I have no idea what people who didn’t play video games did during a snow day. Go outside? Go to hell. In case you didn’t realize it, there’s a snow day on. I’m not setting one foot outside. Bitches be freezing out there. Watch TV? What, you mean like soap operas? Screw that, all the good TV is on when we get home, anyways. I’m taking advantage of this opportunity, bitches. So as you sit down in front of the TV and switch on your NES/Genesis/what have you, the sharp white glow of the snow reflecting in through the windows into your living room, you realize just how great the snow day is. This is just everything you live for. Video games, free time, a kid and his controller; that’s all you need. Yes sir, you know exactly how perfect a moment like this is. And, sadly, how fleeting, in more ways than one. For as we realize that this is just a one day reprieve from our usual daily tasks at the hands of Education, we also realize that we will not get snow days forever. We are growing up now, leaving that innocent day behind us. We are coming to realize that jobs and bosses don’t care about snow days. They expect you there, on time, every single day. The snow day is gone now, melted like a flake caught in the colorful mitten of a child.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. When possible, recapture that fleeting feeling of innocent fun found in the snow day. You can do it. Take a sick day, work from home, do something the next time it blows outside like the events which necessitated Rudolph to utilize his mutant nostrils for the good of all mankind. Sit down in front of your old NES, your faithful friend now covered in dust and the scars of the years, and play some Mega Man at 9:40 in the morning on a Tuesday. These are the moments which we live for. The moments of innocence that show us that the world isn’t all about work and money and sex and rejection! After all, isn’t it those kind of moments that we work and fight for, anyways? The moments that remind us of how much we loved something as simple and as pure as the snow day?
Except for people who lived in the south that is. They didn’t get snow. They can just… I dunno… tan, or something.
