Snow Day #1

As I like to organize within disorganization, as I like working with themes, and as the weather forecaster’s keep saying “snow” with gleaming and malevolent eyes, we’re going to make each Tuesday in December a “snow day”.

Are you ready? This is going to be fun!

Back when I was in 4th grade it began snowing pretty damn hard while we were sitting in school. As it got to be towards the dark end of that day, there were concerns that we were going to be trapped, that buses weren’t going to make it.

Let me set the scene for you a little bit. I grew up in a part of Washington that at the time was, if not Butt Fuck Egypt, it was right across the county line. I lived many miles from the school I attended; many windy, hilly and narrow miles – all of which were now covered by a lot of snow.

The news that we very well may have to spend the night at the school was a thrilling one. It was very similar to that childhood dream of being trapped in the mall and having to spend the night there. I’m not sure why though, as I think the thrill of spending the night in the mall would be getting to play with everything, the only thing to play with at school would be like chalk and yardsticks and the gerbils. I guess for a lot of us it would be like an adventure, like sleeping in a couch fort.

For me it was the thrill of getting to sleep next to Cherity, the girl I had fallen in love with in second grade. Nothing was going to happen, I was 9 years old for Christ’s sake, but the idea of laying next to each other and talking late into the night… I still remember how excited this made me feel.

The busses came though, trudging through, complete with their morbidly obese and lonely drivers. The overnight school adventure dream was broken, and as a final kick to the groin, the bus taking me home could not make it all the way up to my house. I walked the final ¾ of a mile, literally uphill and through the snow, at around 9 at night.

I do remember the dark silence of walking through the middle of nowhere, large, feathery snowflakes falling lazily. It was beautiful and somehow primal, it is the scene I see in my minds eye whenever I read of a dark and snowy night.