New York City Manages to Ruin Tomorrow's Snow Day for All the Little Children
Due to the ominous forecast for tomorrow, New York City has already ordered a preemptive snow day for public schools. Great way to rob these children of one of the greatest feelings that they'll ever have, Bloomberg.
One of the immense joys of childhood was waking up in the morning to look out the window and see a world covered in white, pristine snow then waiting anxiously around the breakfast table to hear whether or not school had been canceled. As the towns (or counties) canceling classes for the day would scroll across the bottom of the screen, we could barely even shovel Cap'n Crunch into our mouths just waiting, waiting to see the name of our school slapped on the television giving us the brilliant freedom of a day off. Calling school off a day early destroys the whole experience.
The problem with letting everyone know about the cancellation in advance is it ruins all the fantastic feelings of anticipation (Related: the sad adult version). Knowing that they're going to have an unexpected holiday, the kids will sleep in the next day and probably procrastinate their homework until Wednesday night. They'll wake up in the morning, already knowing they have nothing to do, but with the dread of the impending work hanging over the festivities like a heavy film of immovable ice coating a windshield.
When you have to wait until the morning, homework would always get done the night before, just in case the snow didn't come. (Waking up to a normal world when you thought there'd surely be a blizzard is one of the worst feelings of childhood.) An early start was mandatory, because the announcement had yet to be made. A potential snow day was like a mini Christmas morning, lying in bed nervously waiting to see whether or not the school superintendent would play Santa Claus, giving us the gift of a day with nothing to do but tire ourselves out running around in the cool, wet goodness, sledding down hills, building forts, having snowball fights, and warming up our pink toes while watching The Price is Right. The mandatory early rise waiting for the good news meant plenty of daylight to burn while exploring the winter wonderland.
Being a kid can suck sometimes, they don't have any money, they can't make any decisions on their own, and they aren't even old enough to drink. One of the one unadulterated blisses were these little tastes of freedom without any stress or obligation, with nothing to do buy enjoy oneself and literally seize the day before going back to petty tyranny of Mrs. Laferrier and her stupid vocabulary words and equations the next day. Thanks to weather forecasting technology, the news-show-indunced paranoia of the modern age, and mean mean city officials, even while the snow day lives, it is a sad crippled version of what it could be. Next time the forecast carries a truckload of flakes to dump on the city, do all the kids a favor and make them wait. Anything less is practically criminal