Walking Uphill Both Ways...the Wussification of our Kids, Part One

It is already 11 AM and I have yet to empty the dishwasher, make my bed, start the laundry, etc.  That's because the idiots on the school board county officials have declared yet another "2 hour delay"  due to the fact that apparently eight flakes of snow fell somewhere within our 400 square mile county.

The topic of weather-related school closings has generated quite a bit of debate around here lately and watching parents slug it out on Facebook has provided yet another way for me to waste time.  The debate seems to break into two camps: the "safety of our kids comes first/it's too cold for our precious children to be outside" whiners against those who declare "what the hell is wrong with you people/kids should be in school/we are raising a nation of wimps" .

We live in the Washington, DC suburbs.  Not really the north and not really the south...sort of a weather catch-all.  We get the worst of all seasons...cold winters and hot, humid summers, broken up by two additional seasons called "mud" and "pollen".  After many years living in the deep south, I was excited to mosey back towards the northeast where I grew up, and introduce my kids to the joys of snowmen, sleds, and the beauty of a snowy winter's day.  (Obviously my memory of winter weather was stalled at about age 10, since I have come to discover that as an adult, snow basically sucks).

7 or 8 years ago, we had our share of snow days and delayed openings and sometimes we complained about it (the parents, not the kids), but all was generally forgotten as soon as the snow melted away. However, something changed within the last several years.  Suddenly, school was being closed at the mere forecast of snow or ice, whether or not anything actually hit the ground.  Instead of  parents waking up to check to see if school was closed, the idiots county officials started calling school off the night before (and sometimes even the afternoon before).  Within the past three years, we have seen school closed for RAIN (the hurricane that wasn't) and PREDICTED snow (that somehow disappeared between the clouds and the ground).

What happened last week was what has led me to conclude that our country is doomed:  the county closed schools because it was TOO COLD.  It was definitely cold, no doubt about it.  However (and this is the important part that seems to be lost on all these brain dead parents) IT IS WINTER.  IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE COLD.  WHY IS EVERYONE CARRYING ON LIKE THIS IS ONE OF THE SEVEN SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE?  I could understand it (maybe) if we lived in southern Florida and no one owned a coat and the schools/buses had no heat and this was a freaky occurrence not to be repeated for a hundred years.

But we live in a place where it gets cold EVERY YEAR.  Everyone I know owns winter wear and snow shovels and boots and ice scrapers and has a fireplace.   The schools have heat, the buses have heat, mittens are $2 a pair at Walmart.  Cold weather in JANUARY is something that is PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED.  Decades from now, we will not be reminiscing with our children, telling stories that start out "remember the year it was cold in January?".

I grew up in Connecticut.  Many of our friends come from places like Wisconsin, Michigan, upstate New York, etc. At the risk of sounding like one of those "I walked uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes" grandparents people, we all managed to go to school during the cold weather in winter.  We wore coats and gloves and scarves and hats and boots (sometimes with plastic bags on our feet to keep them dry).  We were cold, but I never recall hearing about a child who, after five minutes outside, suffered frostbite over 90% of his body and keeled over.  We even...gasp in horror...went out for RECESS.  Were our parents child abusers?  Did town officials blithley ignore our safety and gleefully tally the body count?

No.  It was winter and we bundled up and went on with our lives.  For children, that meant going to school. For parents, that meant zipping up jackets, shoving a hat on our heads and propelling us out the front door to WALK to the bus stop and STAND OUTSIDE waiting for the bus while they went back to their coffee.   And for teachers, that meant getting us outside at some point during the day so that our pent-up energy did not have us hanging from the ceiling tiles by 2 PM.  Somehow we all survived, spring eventually arrived and the hats/coats/ gloves were put away until the following year (when it was discovered that nothing fit anyone anymore).

January school attire, circa 1978

Fast forward thirty a few years and the stoics of the 70's and 80's have produced children that have somehow genetically mutated into creatures who are incapable of sustaining the most basic functions of life if they are exposed to temperatures dipping below 15 degrees.

So last week when the (scary music) POLAR VORTEX (what I believe was previously referred to as "cold air") descended upon us, the powers that be proclaimed that in the interest of public safety and the welfare of our most precious angels, the heated buses would not be bringing the children to their heated schools to further their education.  No, it was decided that it would be in the best interests of our offspring to stay home and play XBox Live with all the other precious angels while their parents gazed at the cloudless blue sky and shielded their eyes against the brilliant sun and wondered why the hell their kids were wandering around the house at 10 AM on a Tuesday.