We are in the midst of an ice storm.  The meteorologist said that the freezing rain that is falling has laid down a sheet of ice one inch thick and it’s still falling.  Obviously I am not getting out of the house in this mess.  But it made me think about all of those poor parents stuck with their kids today.  I’m giving you a shout out!  My kids are all out of school…I would say grown up, but some of you know my kids and I don’t want to get into an argument.  I remember snow days.  There weren’t any easy ones.  At first, I was at home with my kid.  There was only the one, so it wasn’t too bad.  There was a lot of “mommy watch” and “look at me” and crap like that, but you get that with your first child.  You watch too.  It’s your first child.  The world stops for that first child.  Dishes can wait until he goes to bed.  Laundry can be put off too.  It is amazing how one tiny little person can change all the rules.  Then I got my first real job…with a surgeon.  People don’t quit needing a surgeon because of bad weather.  In fact, more surgery is often required due to bad weather.  Why?  Because people are idiots.  They think four wheel drive vehicles are safe on ice.  Like I said, idiots.  Well, when you work for a surgeon, you may have to go in at some bizarre hours.  You’d better have a babysitter on back up.  Luckily, I had a strong family support group.  Otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.  Who do you call at 2:00 a.m. for emergency babysitting?

My next employer was somewhat more lenient.  He still didn’t let me take snow days off (unless he took them off too), but he had a full basement below the office that was decked out like a living room.  By this time I had two children.  They could go in the basement and play video games, snack out all day, and make me crazy using the intercom.  “Mom, how much longer?  I’m bored and I’ve already killed all the alien robots.  There is nothing left to eat down here.  How come we can’t come up there?  What if we start bleedin’?  Can we come up then?”  And this went on all day long.  Eventually, I told them bleedin’ wasn’t going to be a problem because I was going to choke them to death and there wouldn’t be any blood.  Just two little bodies to do away with.  The fear of mom lasted about 10 seconds.

When I quit this job (you knew it had to happen) I opened my own day care.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I had three kids by now, and I was paying out the wazoo for day care.  Somehow, I figured that if I kept my kids and just a few others I could make just as much money and I wouldn’t have to worry about things like my kids being sick or snow days or any of the other things that working parents deal with.  Here is what I didn’t think about, on snow days you have between 6 and 8 unruly, bored, smelly little people wanting to go outside, in your home.  There has never been enough Xanax for a day like that.  I had parents  who wanted to drop their kids off at 6:00 a.m., and I had parents who picked their kids up at 6:00 p.m.  That is a long ass day any way you look at it. 

I wish I could remember what snow days were like for me as a child.  I don’t.  I know as a teenager I stayed home all day searching the three television stations that our antennae brought into our living room (woo-hoo!), and talking on the phone (which had a cord that attached it to the wall and was the only one in the house…archaic?…I Know!), and waiting for Dark Shadows to come on.  I did my adolescent duty by eating as many bags of Doritos as I could, and consuming mass quantities of Dr. Pepper and Sprite.  However, I’m talking about being somewhere between 11 and 17 years old.  My parents didn’t have to worry about babysitters.  They got up, went to work, and sometime later in the day I began my munch fest.  I didn’t go out in the snow (too girly) and I certainly didn’t get in anyone else’s car and go anywhere (too scaredy).  They knew where I would be all day long. 

The thing that I have learned as I’ve aged, though, is that your parent’s memories often differ from yours.  All of those memories I have about my kids snow days, and the things we did or didn’t do, well they probably wouldn’t agree with me at all.  I have found that so much of what I have been told growing up, my parent’s can’t remember.  There are things that I know happened that they simply don’t remember.  In addition there are things that I have been told happened that they don’t remember either.  For example, I know that in 1975 I was in the swimming area of Hwy 125 park with my friend Diana when a tornado hit.  My mother was standing at the top of the hill shouting for us to get up to the RV.  We ran up the hill and each took places of safety (yeah, right).  I dived beneath the cement table, mom and Di hid behind the RV (genius, right?), and Dad held on to a tree (see what I’m saying?)  As the storm hit, I was the only one who could view what was going on because my eyes were shielded by concrete.  I looked out and saw Dad’s legs out at a 45 degree angle from the tree, and he was holding on for dear life.  After the tornado had passed, I told what I had seen.  Nope…never happened.  His feet were always planted firmly on the ground. It still makes me furious.  As an example of things that I have been told that happened…on February 28th, 1960, snow began to fall, and my mother went in to labor.  My Dad, along with several Aunts and Uncles, was watching basketball at the state basketball tournament.  Someone…the actual person has changed throughout time, although the most dramatic telling is that my mother herself…drove my mom to the doctor’s office. A scant few hours later (I was the fifth girl child) my mother gave birth and my dad walked in and said “I know it’s a girl, just tell me how they’re doing.”  The doctor asked Dad if he could get us home though all the snow because if he couldn’t that night, he didn’t know when he would be able to.  We went home just a few hours after my birth.  The house was filled with people who couldn’t make it back to their houses and my sisters were out of school for six weeks.  In all a total of 6 feet of snow fell when I was born.  - The End-

I have been told this story every year on my birthday forever.  I was recounting it to my son one year, and he doubted that six feet of snow had ever fallen in Arkansas, not to mention so quickly. I responded that while I was alive at the time, I have very little recollection of the event, I had only been told.  Over and over again, I had been told.  He badgered me relentlessly about this story.  Finally, I said “let’s just call granny.  She can tell you the story as well as she’s told me.”  I called my mother.  “Mom, how much snow fell on the night I was born?”  “I don’t know.”  “What?”  “I said, I don’t know.”….”Mom, as long as I’ve lived you’ve told me the story of the winter of 1960 and how bad it was.  You don’t remember how much snow fell on the night I was born?”  (crickets) “About 2 inches?”  “Mom, hand Daddy the damn phone!”  “Yello”   “Daddy, how much snow fell on the night I was born?”  ”About 2 inches, I reckon.”…”Then tell me why, my whole life, I’ve been told there was 6 feet of snow on the ground when I was born?”…”Well, I reckon that by the time it was all said and done there was 6 feet of snow on the ground.” I don’t have to tell you that the entire room behind my was full of people pissing their pants laughing.  My fault, I shouldn’t have put it on speaker, but I thought I had this one.  I really did.  Needless to say, I have since been the butt of many jokes, and with Feb. 28th, fast approaching, I see more on the horizon.  Well, good thing my butt is wide.  It can take the hit.