About done with the freakin School Delays...

Sweet baby Jesus, we have another two hour delay for school.  I swear, I do NOT remember getting out of school because of cold when I was a kid.  In fact, I remember going to school, and it was so cold, my hair was a little damp, and it froze as soon as I walked outside into small icicles all over my head where it stuck out from my hat.

I remember being a kid, and listening to the radio in my room, from bed, waiting to hear if our school was closed.  We went to Newark High School, and so I had to wait until really far into the list to hear it, and the anticipation was completely exhausting.  By the time they got to the "N"s I was so stressed out, that if they did say our school's name, I definatly was not going to be able to go back to sleep.

 Now, we hear about it usually the night before, and I not only hear about it from the automated phone call we get on our land line, I get another one on my cell, my husband's cell, a text, and an email.  And because Your royal highness is just that kind of kid, he still has to see it on the news in order to really believe it is true.  Where is the anticipation?  The kids these days don't have to work for their information at all!  In fact, just this morning, my son had a delay, and he slept in until 8:30! First of all, I do not remember ever having delays.  Second, if we did get a day off, or something, I was still up at the crack of stupid because my mom didn't believe in kids "wasting their day sleeping".  To this day if I sleep in past 7am I feel completely guilty.

I will never forget when I was in high school, my senior year.  I got a job at Petland, a local pet store.
  I was a kennel tech (which is a really fancy term for cleaning up poo every day) and one night we had a huge snowstorm.  There was probably about 2 feet of snow.  I was so excited because we had a snow day, and I was being lazy in my pajamas eating breakfast, when I got a call from the manager, asking me to come in.  I was in disbelief!  It was a snow day!  What do you mean I need to come in??  I have the day off!  My father looked at me and said, "There are no snow days when you work.  Get dressed in your uniform, and get your fanny into work."  I was so angry! Work on a snow day!  What do you mean work on a snow day?  This was my first glimpse into reality.  There are no snow days when you are older.  Innocence gone.

Then I came to find out after college, you also don't get spring breaks!  Or summer vacations!  (now I already worked most summer and winter breaks, but it FELT like a break because I wasn't studying.)  Working when you are grown up means you do not get a real summer like when you were a kid.   Summer runs into fall, fall runs into winter, winter runs into spring and the circle goes on.  There is no real transition, it is constant.

However, now as a mom, not only do you not get breaks, you don't get vacations.  You don't get sleep, or time off, or sick days, or anything.  I don't even get a lunch break or dinner time.  I don't even get potty breaks!  I go to the bathroom AND THEY FOLLOW ME THERE!  I cannot imagine that happening at the school where I used to teach.  "I am going to the bathroom Julie."  "Oh, that is ok, I will just follow you and you can keep giving me you lesson plans for the week...."

So all this rant is to say that I get playing it safe and keeping kids home if the roads are bad, but I feel we are giving them all a false sense of entitlement if we keep them home on cold days.  Here is a hint:  Dress up your kid really warm, and don't send them out to the bus stop until it is time for the bus to arrive!  Otherwise if we keep having these "closed due to cold days," when they are
old enough to have jobs, they are going to be calling into the office, "I am so sorry, I can't come in today, it is just too cold."  To which the  boss will say, "Your royal highness, it is 40 degrees out.  Get to work."