I love snow days. I always have. As a kid, I would race to the tv to see if school was cancelled. Once the school cancellation was announced, it meant a day of sledding, snowball fights, and making snowmen. Then after being outside all day, I'd come inside to a nice cup of hot chocolate with mini marshmallows floating on top. I would always eat the marshmallows first and hope that I could convince Mom to give me more; I rarely won the battle of the marshmallows.
As an adult, snow days are more complicated. I still love playing in the snow with Elisabeth and still coming in to a nice cup of hot chocolate. But, now my favorite part of a snow day is right before the snow starts. There's something about the quiet and the still of it all. Yesterday, I was outside watching the birds and just enjoying it all. Not a sound was to be heard, no birds tweeting, no dogs barking, not even the sound of a car engine. Everything was very peaceful, almost like I was the only soul in the world.
Not all snow days were like this. It was March 13 of 1993, and the Blizzard of 1993 was in full effect. A lot of people were without power and water. My family was lucky, the only utility we lost was cable television. Little did I know that the loss of cable would plunge my world into madness. As noted above, I wasn't afraid of going outside to play in the snow, but I couldn't play outside all of the time. So, in the time I had to be inside, we watched movies on the VCR (look it up kiddos). Somehow my sister discovered the movie "Troop Beverly Hills". She latched onto that movie. It seemed every time I looked around, the movie was on. I was being slowly tortured and humane practices were not being used. By the time school started back, I could almost recite the whole movie from heart. For once, I was over joyed to be back in school.
Yesterday, I came from the shower and what did my ears hear? The sounds of that retched movie coming from my living room tv. My daughter had discovered it on Netflix. So far, she has only watched it the one time. I have one mission now, I must contact the programming director of Netflix and demand it be removed. Either that or cancel all of our tv services. Hmmm. Hard choices.