High Hopes

I think some snow is on the way! The TV weathermen and weatherwomen are calling for 8-10 inches! I hope they're not as wrong as last time they called for 8-10 inches, and we got flurries. I'm hoping it truly does arrive around 11:00 a.m. They were calling for it to hit around 6:00 p.m., but when I got to the lunch table today, Mr. S told me the good news on the updated forecast.

That means they will send us home early. There is nothing quite so good as being sent home early, knowing that you should be out tomorrow as well. Except maybe the last half-day of the school year. (Which is almost here, you know!) Two years ago, there was snow in the forecast for afternoon. We all arrived at school like we normally do. Then it started to snow around 8:00 a.m. School started at 8:10. By 9:00, they had announced that we would be eating lunch at 9:30, and leaving after 3rd lunch shift. We got all excited. The snow kept pouring down. Parents flocked in to pick up their darlings. We watched out my windows as the cars slip-slided away.

The first bus arrived from Basementia. Middle school kids got off. High school kids got on. The bus pulled away. We waited for the rest of the buses. But they didn't come. Then the radio announced that there would be no more buses. They could no longer make it up the hill from Basementia to Newmentia. And since the roads were so bad, they were not loading any buses at the elementary. Parents were being called to come pick up their children.

Which threw a little monkey wrench into my day, because my children were at Elementia. I had one student left in my classroom. One student whose parents did not love her enough to come get her. Okay, that's not really true, but it sounds pretty dramatic in my story. The counselor, who fancied herself in charge, told me I could go to Elementia for my boys, and come back to supervise my 'class'. I sent my student to the cafeteria, threw the LSUV into 4WD, and putted over to Elementia. The roads were very slick. I only had to go about a mile. Elementia had its act together. A teacher with a clipboard greeted me at the pick-up door. She wrote down my boys' names, and radioed the office. The office intercommed the classrooms, and My Little Pony was prancing down the hall before I could say 'Paula Deen in my front yard eating a lobster tail'. The Pony and I waited for #1. And waited. And waited. We waited for nigh on 30 minutes. He couldn't be found. I was about to have a cow. The Pony grew fractious. I finally said I would walk to #1's classroom and see what I could find out. Just then, #1 came in the door right behind me. He had been chosen to shovel the walk. He had to go back to his classroom to get his coat. Because nobody wears a coat and hat and gloves to shovel a walk. They just do it in shirtsleeves.

I took the boys back to Newmentia. The roads were even worse. I parked out front, on the flat, instead of on the sloping backside of Newmentia. The counselor waved to me. "You don't have to stay. Go ahead and start home." Which was really considerate of her. But there was no going home for the Hillbilly family. Three vehicles had slid off the hill where the bus couldn't come up. And they had been going DOWN. We had to wait about an hour for the road to be cleared. Lucky for me, I could see it all from the windows of my room. Once we got going, in 4WD LOW, it took us 1:45 to get home. It usually takes 40 minutes.

The people at school were stuck supervising children until we could get rid of all of them. Mr. S hurt his knee pushing students' cars up the hill of their parking lot. One of the coaches drove a lot of kids home. The custodians chauffeured Mabel and her Mabelmobile to her abode. And the kids that were stranded were forced to eat hamburgers left over from the 9:30 lunch. I think it was 1:00 before we got rid of everyone.

And the point of this boring story is: I think they will call off school a little earlier this time.