So far this year, the snow gods seem to have taken pity on the parents of Flagstaff by dropping the first real snow of the year on a Saturday. This means that we have all weekend long to: find our snow shovels (or give up and buy new ones); find our gloves (or give up and buy new ones); find our snow boots (or give up and buy new ones), and find our ice scrapers (or give up and—oh, you get the idea). It also means that we get a small taste of exactly what flavor of “I’m bored” snow day whining we have to look forward to, and hopefully head some of it off at the pass.
It’s funny to think about kids getting sick of snow days, too—aren’t they supposed to be the ones dropping ice cubes in the toilet to bring them about in the first place?—but if last year’s spate of four day snow weekends taught me anything, it taught me that even kids can get tired of too much of a good thing. And that snow days aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be.
For one thing, there’s the problem of all that snow on the ground. I mean, think about it from a kid’s point of view: from inside the house it looks like fun, but then you actually go out in it and it’s all cold and wet. At first it’s okay: you pull out the sleds, have snowball fights, maybe even build an obscene snowman. But then you realize that your snow pants are too small, your boots from last year still have that hole in the side that lets in water every time you step in a puddle, and that the only kid on your block who is willing to have a snowball fight cries when he gets hit in the face with an iceball—every single time. “Don’t aim for his face then,” your mother tells you. As if there is anyplace else to aim when you’re having a snowball fight. (It’s a snowball fight, for crying out loud. Nobody ever stopped an enemy assault by hitting the enemy’s kneecaps.)
True, there’s always inside things to do, of course, but believe it or not even video games will lose their appeal eventually. My son, Clyde, found that out the hard way during our last run of snow days, when the time finally came when he had killed off every enemy in the video world, and had no choice but to turn on potential friends.
“Hey,” I said, after I had walked into the room and found him listlessly shooting a bunch of friendly looking big-headed blue guys. “What are you doing? Those guys look like they might actually be kind of fun to hang out with.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said as he shot another one of them in the head.
I watched two of the blue guys try and surrender to Clyde, with no luck: two shots, two less blue guys in the gaming world. “So, ah, what’s this game called, anyway?” I asked.
“’First Contact’.”
“Oh. Do you have to shoot them?”
“I guess.”
And then he listlessly shot another one.
The sad part was that I couldn’t really blame him. After all, by the fourth snow day in a row the thought of shooting an unarmed blue guy in the head was starting to sound appealing to me, too.
But not this year. This year, thanks to our first, early warning of a snow, we’ll all be prepared for the snow days to come. Won’t we?
Oh, who am I trying to kid? Those blue guys probably had it coming.
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