Stay Home: TV And Hot Chocolate Is The Only Way To Make It Through

My best friend Vicki is usually up with the roosters, so when I couldn't get her by nine a.m. this morning (by text or phone), I called her husband to find out what the deal was. He tracked her down and then told me to try the house again and she'd pick up; so I did. When she answered, I asked her what she was doing and she said she was still in bed. "STILL IN BED?????" I bellowed. "Are you sick?"

She wasn't sick, but apparently she stayed up late last night with the kids because they didn't have school today. Or yesterday, it turns out. "Why not?" I asked.

"Because we got four flakes." she said. I burst out laughing. "Two yesterday and two today. They shut down the entire school district."

I knew exactly what she meant: people in the South can't drive in any version of inclement weather. She lives in Tennessee and apparently, any little bit of snow throws the town into a tizzy. She said the news crews were out on I-40 filming all the people in ditches and when she and Anthony (her husband) went to the store, they were floored by how many people were on the sides of the roads. They wondered aloud how they ever got by living in New York.

We had a real good laugh about the whole thing and started reminiscing about being kids and how our school district almost never used all their snow days. We would get up and see that we got three feet of snow and react with a "Woo hoo! No school today!" And then you'd hear the snowplow rumbling down the street, with the school bus right behind it. Damn.

You could never be sure what had to happen for school to be closed. We went to school in so much snow, you would have thought they'd close the highways, let alone the schools. Those damn people were hellbent on getting us some learnin'. I mean, where I lived in upstate New York, we'd literally have to get N'oreaster for them to close anything.

But in the South, forget about it. They see a flake and the whole town closes down. And as we discovered the other night when we actually stopped driving, they don't send out the salt trucks or the plows fast enough. I guess they wait for the first pile-up to be called in and the rescue crews to go out.

They should issue warnings to the residents like they do in Chicago; don't go outside unless it's absolutely necessary. Stay off the roads. It's safer at home.


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1 YEAR AGO: A Rainy Rainbow
2 YEARS AGO: Be Wary Of Women Wearing Skull Panties
3 YEARS AGO: Holiday Sparkle
4 YEARS AGO: Arizona Sunset
5 YEARS AGO: Before And After The Chops