Mike

Ball

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February 11, 2008

Snow Day

As some of you know, I have a pretty cool day job at a small library. One of the best things about this job is that when the local schools shut down for bad weather, the library shuts down too.

I get Snow Days!

This means that any time there’s a chance of snow on a “school night,” I instantly become eight years old. I monitor every available weather forecast. I scan the western skies. I subscribe to a 24-hour online school closing advisory service. And then, of course, I do my “Snow Dance.”

For those of you who live in Southern California, on Mars or anywhere else Snow Days never happen, the Snow Dance is a highly personal ritual that can take many forms. My own version of the Snow Dance is performed as follows:

1. Put your pajamas on inside-out and backward.

2. Tape a nickel to a west-facing window, with Thomas Jefferson looking out (watching for the storm). There are those who believe that the nickel must be from the 1960s or earlier, because of the relative purity of the metal. This is silly superstitious nonsense – any nickel taped to the window will make it snow.

3. Tear up some notebook paper into small “snowflakes.” Mead 3-hole punched with light blue medium-width lines works the best.

4. Hop around on your left foot, through every room in the house, throwing your paper snowflakes in the air and singing “Snow come and shut down all the schools” to the tune of the Beatles’ “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road.”

5. Explain all this to your wife. A consultation with an attorney, a mental health professional or both may be necessary at this point.

And when you finally get your snow day, here’s how it goes:

6:45 a.m. – the guy on the radio reads off the list of school closings, and hallelujah – you’re on the list! You roll over and go back to sleep.

10:45 a.m. – you wake up with a start, thinking that you’re late for work. Then you relax as you remember that you have a whole day to accomplish all the personal things you’re usually way too busy to get around to.

11:45 a.m. – you wake up with a start . . .

Noon – you go downstairs, have a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. Then you sit back with a notebook and a pen to plan your day around all the personal things you’re usually way too busy to get around to. You flip the television on, just to check out the news and the weather update.

1:30 p.m. – you decide to get going on that list of personal things you’re usually way too busy to get around to, right after you watch the last episode in the “Flipper” marathon on the Family Channel.

3:15 p.m. – you wake up with a start . . .

3:28 p.m. – you make your mind up to dive right into that list of personal things you’re usually way too busy to get around to, right after maybe 10 or 15 minutes of Guitar Hero, since you never seem to get a chance to crank the old PS2 up any more, and besides, you saw an article somewhere that said that video games can help build hand-eye coordination, and it seems like some of that would come in pretty handy . . .

6:45 p.m. – your wife comes home from work and declines your invitation to a Guitar Hero Death Match before you shut down the old PS2 and start planning dinner.

OK, that’s pretty much it. I should wrap this up and go now. A 1948 nickel just turned up in my pocket change, and I have to go dig up some tape.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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