Snow or Something Like It by Carla
Sometime during high school, I signed up for text alerts from my local news station. Snow days were few and far between, but I always held out hope for them. I drove twenty and some minutes in morning traffic to get to school every morning, which became thirty and some minutes in bad winter weather. I’d wake up at five some winter mornings to see if an alert had been sent to my phone. Had school been canceled? Could I shut off my alarm and sleep all morning? I was usually disappointed. This morning, I woke up to one of those messages.
I woke up to that longed-for text alert that told me that schools back home were closed. A lot of good that does me now, right? The roads were a mess—here, there and probably everywhere in between. Local schools here had closed, too. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t be going to my typical Tuesday field experience. One of the first things the volunteer coordinator at Wood Lane had told me when she trained me was that the Wood Lane School closes all of the time. If local schools close, it closes, she said. I put away the stickers and notebook and nice clothes I’d laid out. I was disappointed, but what could I do? There will be a lot of opportunities to make up those field hours. I couldn’t help but notice the irony, though: I used to kill for snow days. Now, they wreck my plans.
With no field experience today and one class canceled, my day was pretty easy. The only real challenge was navigating around outside—particularly in the evening, when the town was hit with some version of snow or ice or snowy ice pellets. Walking to the Sundial, I got pelted with the icy mixture. It wasn’t a great experience, but I wanted my sandwich and Snapple. I ended up taking the shuttle back, which is fairly pathetic, but completely worth it. Before I had even stepped onto the bus, the wind (then close to thirty miles per hour) whipped my earmuffs back. Ice chips flew at me from all angles. They were quite literally being blown in circles.We slowly, carefully, made our way over to Harshman, and I called it a night.
My conception of snow days has definitely changed. I wouldn’t mind if the university closed tomorrow, but I’ve heard this doesn’t happen, so I won’t waste any time hoping. Part of me envies the students at home who got to enjoy a free day today, but I figure they deserve it. This snow—or ice, or something like it—can spell out trouble for teenage drivers. As for me? My car is hanging out in Lot 12, probably buried under a snow pile. It isn’t going anywhere. I have two classes in my residence hall tomorrow, one canceled, and no real need to go outside all afternoon. I doubt I’ll even put on shoes. I hardly need a snow day.