snow days

We had a snow day for work. Weather reports yesterday called for snow, sleet, and ice starting around 4am and lasting throughout much of the day. This is the first time in years that I found myself praying and praying for snow. When my neighbor woke me up scraping ice from her car I noticed it was still dark out. I knew there was icy precipitation. I knew all signs pointed to no work today. I received my wish. Now I am warm and snug, listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, and happily not serving caffeine hounds in the coffee shop (not that I’m averse to that kind of thing).

I think I was in seventh grade when we had about a month’s worth of snow days. Once a week it seemed as though we had an ice storm, and so we hardly ever went to school. This was both good and bad. On the one hand we didn’t have to go to school – every child’s wish. On the other hand, when you give two young minds like mine and my brother’s that much free time, unspeakable things are going to happen.

This is confession time. Growing up, my brother and I had lots of stuffed animals. My mother ran a head count once we moved out, and she found well over a hundred. I’m not sure of the exact number. I think I kept buying (or impressing others to buy) so many stuffed animals because my parents weren’t very keen on having pets. It’s nothing against them. That’s just the sort of house they wanted. My brother and I were also diagnosed as having cat and dog allergies when we were little, so that played into it as well. I must have compensated for my lack of a kitty by getting a hold of every cat-sized fake furry friend I could find. I’ve written about my stuffed panther Blackie before. He came from this crop of friends. Blackie has a little brother named Leo, a leopard. The ringleader of the bunch is a yellow rabbit named Bean. They all have voices. They all have characters. In seventh grade, when my brother and I had so much free time thanks to snow days, they blossomed. We made up so many stories with them and laughed ourselves asphyxiated. We would play NES or Sega Genesis, either an entire Tecmo Super Bowl season or an EA Games NHL 93 playoffs, and then we got to work on the day’s fun. It might seem scary to the uninitiated. When you’re in the middle of it like me and Tim, it’s a way of life. My mother and father can thank the weather for a legacy of torture at the hands of a dozen or so disembodied voices.

For some reason that’s what I think of when I think of snow days now. There was the thrill of staying home from school, but after a while you get bored. Use the tools at hand to entertain yourself. I found myself thinking of seventh grade last night. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore to make up stories with these guys the way I used to, but it’s nice to reminisce. My entertainment tools have become DVD, CD, and vinyl oriented, but Blackie chills out on the back of the couch while he waits for me to finish what I’m doing. He gets his love in due time. There’s nothing else to do on a workless, freezing night but listen to music, watch DVD’s, and write a blog about snow days from the past. There is always time to love an old best friend.