All Is Grace

i believe that we are raising a generation of weenies.

that’s right. weenies. and i don’t mean the cute little ones you call “pigs in a blanket” and wrap up in tiny crescent rolls, or slather in nasty barbecue in your crock pot for holiday gatherings (yuck.).

i mean our kids are wimps, folks. wussies. babies.

tomorrow morning, it’s going to be something like -15*F with the windchill in my neighborhood. it could get down to -30* in some areas, at some points. our school district has cancelled school. actually, it cancelled somewhere around 3 this afternoon. for tomorrow. and after-school activities for today were cancelled around 11 this morning. (at 8:00 tonight it was still 25* outside according to my happy window thermometer, just for the record. but obviously, too cold for after-school activities.)

i would like to have a short informational session about wind chill factors. according to my research, which includes wikiHow for this quote: ” Wind chill is the effect that wind has on our skin in cold weather. It is not something that makes the actual outside temperature less but it is the combination of the cold air and wind impacting on our skin. It does not have any temperature-reduction effect on non-living objects (although the wind itself can obviously affect things like camping stoves for mountaineers etc.). Our skin feels colder because its internal body heat that usually generates a ‘boundary layer’ of heat surrounding our body is ‘blown away’ by the wind hitting it. Removal of this tiny layer of warm air from around our body leaves us exposed directly to the cold air. ” From http://thenewsobserver.com, “The National Weather Service Windchill Chart states that at a wind chill of about -19º, frost bite can occur in thirty minutes.”

friends, i live in upstate NY. it gets cold in the winter. really cold. though our winters for the past 10 or 12 years have been relatively mild, i remember winters when we got a couple of feet of snow at a time. i remember quietly arguing with my father who insisted that, despite the late-eighties big-hair phenomenon, i wear a knit hat to the bus stop. which was less than a block from my house. a lot less. by like three-quarters of a block. but when dad told me to wear hat and gloves and coat and boots to school…guess what? i wore hat and gloves and coat and boots to school. didn’t matter if it was cool enough. didn’t matter if it was cute. or if it smooshed my hair. i needed to be warm.

i was warm.

the end.

and friends? i bet it got down below 0 sometimes. even sometimes when i had to wait outside for the bus. but i had my hat and gloves and scarf and hat on. the WIND CHILL affected my nose and cheeks for a few minutes (fewer if i ran to my bus stop late because…i almost always did). amazingly, i never got frostbite.

not even once. in 13 years of riding the bus to school. 11 of which were in upstate NY.

i got a little snarky about all of this chatter about “wind chill” and “school cancellations” long about 3:00 this afternoon. i pounded my snark into a facebook post right about that time…and then re-thought my words. i had already seen posts saying friends were “so glad school was cancelled” because of the “dangers to the children” and the “likelihood of frostbite” and the “possibilities of harm” to the kids. people talking about buses breaking down and buses not starting and how even if school wasn’t canceled, more than likely, these friends would keep their kids home from school. did i really want to enter the fray?

i deleted my post. mentioned that i had deleted a snarky post. of course, the comments still came. nobody telling me i sucked, but people saying, “well, you know….” the thing is, the point that really stuck out to me was the fact that “back in your day, more than likely, people weren’t nearly so litigious as they are today.” more or less, this wife-of-a-lawyer was telling me this whole situation was a lawsuit waiting to happen. schools are shutting down tomorrow, forfeiting their government funding for the day to avoid being sued. the second day of school after a two week break cancelled because temps would drop into the negative numbers.

oy.

in all of my thinking prior to posting that update, prior to deleting it, my brain had gone to various other ideas. schools were cancelling because children are wimps. they can’t be expected to walk their 10 minute walk in freezing temperatures. my train of thought went from there to the fact that children don’t generally like winter clothing. i remember HATING that freaking knit hat. and my son fights me about wearing his winter coat all winter long. i get it. but you know what? when i tell him to put it on, he does. he doesn’t like it, but he puts it on. parents just don’t insist that their kids do things they don’t want to do anymore and the school district knows it. so they cancelled school.

ok, well, of course it couldn’t be that lame. so the train chugged onward: we live in a relatively poor school district (sort of). our church collects backpacks full of mittens and hats and scarves every winter to give to local schools. there are kids who don’t have warm clothing to wear. but see…these kids are the same kids whose parents get public assistance for food and shelter and all sorts of things–this is not a judgement of them, it is merely truth! why do they not have warm clothing? i have a winter coat i purchased from the Salvation Army three winters ago. it’s a North Face, zippers all over it, best wind-breaking coat i’ve ever owned, black, stylish coat. i bought it for $4. full price. half price day there is Wednesdays. and we have Pookie’s Little Britches in town, where all the clothing is $4-10. there is no reason children in my school district don’t have clothing to break the cold and not have skin exposed to the wind chill. because, if you remember, wind chill only affects human skin, not the temperature of the actual air (so if you’re covered, you’re probably ok for more than the aforementioned 10-30 minutes!). and people, it’s January. in upstate New York. if you didn’t have a winter coat in the public schools by November, your teacher noticed and made sure someone was aware of this and the problem was remedied.

period.

oh, and did i mention that inanimate objects are not affected by the wind chill? this rules out the whole “buses will break down in the extreme cold temperatures.” and yes. it’s possible that they could break down in general, but not any more so than any other day of the year. and do we remember here, in the grand scheme of the reality that is public schooling/busing, that there is a complete maintenance staff devoted solely to the care and upkeep of the buses that travel on the roads every. single. day. of the year. to transport our children to public schools? and none of those buses are outside a 20 minute range of the bus garage for their particular school district at any time? and with the 40 or 50% of students on those buses carrying cell phones at any given time, the likelihood of the bus breaking down, the radio in the bus being disabled, or even the bus being OVERTURNED IN THE MIDDLE OF A CREEK and someone not being able to get in touch with emergency services is no more likely with a wind chill of -30* than it is on a 90* day in June.

give me a freaking break.

but you know what could happen? some kid could decide, “oh, it’s not that bad out. i’m going to rip my hat and gloves off as soon as i’m out of sight of my house,” and walk to school from the greatest walking distance from the school outside of busing range. that kid could play in the snow on the way to school or fall in a puddle (oh wait, no puddles when it’s that cold) and by the time he gets to school, wind up with frostbite or something similar. the parents could freak, claiming that the child was sent on his way with warm clothing and still, because of the school’s negligence, by not cancelling based upon the weather predictions, wound up with frostbite and lost feeling in the tip of his left earlobe. the parents could sue the school district for $1.5 million to cover hospital expenses, a private tutor during recovery, and pain and suffering.

tomorrow there will be no school in our school district and all of those surrounding us. even Rochester has caved. no school there either. (don’t even GET me started on that one.) because some parent could potentially blame the district for their child’s cold-related injury, and the district could be sued.

we will no longer require our children to go to school when it’s super cold. we will make sure we build a few more days into the school calendar each year to avoid cold, snow, wind, ice, water, or heat. when they become adults, they will look out the window and they will say, “gee, i don’t know. it looks like it might snow. or freezing rain. i would have to bundle up and probably scrape my windshield before i go in. i think i’ll hope that they cancel work, but if they don’t, i’ll call off because…well, it’s just too much of a risk.” after all, they never had to walk through freezing temperatures to get somewhere important. even worse, they’ll drive in when work doesn’t cancel (in admittedly bad conditions, but they never bothered to learn how to drive cautiously in poor conditions), and they’ll have an accident on a patch of ice on the way into work, and they’ll SUE THEIR EMPLOYERS because they didn’t cancel work for the day. people, what are we teaching our kids????? we make fun of our grandparents when they tell us the stories of walking to school uphill both ways in a blizzard, but…i mean…really???

the Hayes family will school tomorrow.

out of spite.

we usually follow the school’s cancellation calendar so that we can play with friends who have the day off too. i mean, what good is a pile of snow without people with whom to play in said pile?

not tomorrow. they’re going to call off a few more useless days this winter–they’ve done it the past three years, this one will be no different–and then have to add days back into a vacation.

we will not ruin awesome week-long vacations because of worthless snow days.

sigh. people. get a grip.

end rant.