Thursday, January 20, 2011

Whatever Happened to "Hardy New Englanders"?

Tomorrow it is predicted that we'll get less than 6 inches of snow. And some schools already cancelled tonight! Seriously? 6 inches is not a snowstorm by any stretch of the imagination. I live in New Hampshire, and I consider 6 inches a dusting. Cancelling school the night before is ludicrous, considering the weather reports are WRONG half the time! And.........it takes away from the fun of waking up in the morning and finding out you don't have to get up. Way back when I was a kid, you listened at 6am for the fire horn in the center of town to go off. That meant no school. When my kids were little, we huddled around the radio, listening as they announced the towns, in alphabetical order, that cancelled school. Heaven forbid you should turn on the radio just as they were announcing the "T"s (we lived in Salem) because then you had to wait for the alphabet to come around again. Nowadays, the schools either send out a reverse phone call, a massive text, or put it on a scroll at the bottom of the television. Kinda takes the anticipation out of it. I'm amazed at how many people panic when there's snow. A person in my office was furious that we hadn't closed the office. Sure, we only had one customer all day, but we all got to work safely and all got home safely......so why shouldn't we be open? My favorite thing, though, is the panic that sets in over food. Everyone must go out and buy milk, bread and eggs (The French Toast Panic) as if they won't have food again for months. It's the 21st century people! There are plows and sanding trucks, and most of the time, we can go out in the streets the very next day. You won't starve! It's New England in winter and it snows. Get over it.

1 comment:

Kaye said...

Ha ha, I hear you about turning in and hearing the T's - I grew up in Scituate