Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Tricks to ensure a snow day--Warning: ONLY use these for school days!

The news yesterday was pretty bleak and ominous.

And I’m not even talking about the horrors that happened in Arizona over the weekend.

I’m just talking about the weather forecast. Snow developing sometime today into tonight, with small accumulations of about one to three inches.

In other words, my worst nightmare. Because it’s going to start while I’m at school but not be bad enough to get us out early, and it will probably end too soon to have an impact on school for tomorrow.

But it’ll be just enough to ensure that the kids are COMPLETELY insane.

Because kids, when snow is in the forecast, lose all sense of sanity, reason, and humanity. I usually hide under my desk until the threat of snow is over, but I decided to make this weather forecast into a teachable moment for my students. So today I plan to teach the one lesson that high school kids will be able to focus on and learn from once those flakes start falling from the sky: I’m going to teach them how to make it snow enough to get us out of some school.

Because yes, I know how to control the weather. And I’m going to share my secret with you, as long as you PROMISE to only use the knowledge for good snow that will get us out of school, NOT snow that will ruin weekend plans.

Do you promise?

Good.

Some of the tricks, you probably already know. For example, everyone knows that you’re supposed to go to bed with your pajamas on inside out and backwards the night before you want it to snow. If you’re JUST wearing them inside out, it’s not going to work. Inside out AND backwards. And if you don’t normally sleep in pajamas, DO IT ANYWAY. I mean, it’s winter. It’s cold out. Like I told the kid who showed up at school in shorts yesterday, PUT SOME CLOTHES ON. Just do it inside out and backwards when you want snow.

However, JUST wearing your pajamas inside out and backwards isn’t going to get you out of school. Literally. Even if they’re calling for a blizzard, if that’s all you do, you’re going to school tomorrow. On time. And staying for the full day. Trust me.

In order to guarantee a snow day, you have to do ALL of the following things. The order, in general, doesn’t matter. But if you skip a step, you WILL have school.

First of all, you need to do a snow dance. This one is tricky. Because doing the wrong dance moves could, in fact, cause other weather phenomenon and/or your neighbors to videotape you and put your horrendous moves on YouTube. In which case I will laugh at you, and be very angry at you for not doing a proper dance that will ensure a day off.

There are a ton of videos of how to do this incorrectly on YouTube. Here are some of my favorites:






However, the ONLY proper snow dance is the following:


If you’re doing it any other way, you’re doing it wrong and when we have school, it’s YOUR fault.

The next thing you need to do is get as many ice cubes as you can. Take them into the bathroom and flush them, one at a time, down the toilet. I don’t know why this one works, but it does.

Note: I take no responsibility for any damage this does to your toilet and/or pipes.

I don’t make the snow rules. I just tell you how to follow them.

Next, take a spoon and stick it in the freezer for an hour. Then place the frozen spoon on your windowsill and leave it there overnight. You also need to find a white crayon and leave it in your freezer overnight. Failure to follow these steps will result in a full day of school.

However, there’s really only one thing that you MUST do to guarantee a snow day. You’re not going to like this one. But if you ignore this step, I can promise that you will have school, no matter what, every time. DO ALL YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE BED.

That’s the trickiest step. I don’t know how the snow gods know if you did your homework or not, but they do. And if I have to go to school because YOU didn’t feel like doing your homework, I WILL find out and I will be very, VERY angry with you. Which, considering that I think I killed my next-door neighbor with my mind, is NOT something you want. (We’ll get to that one once I figure out if he’s actually dead or not.)

And if you have a job that isn't in a school, you still have to do your homework if you want a day off.  Spend at least 20 minutes on math problems and read three chapters in a book to help your teacher friends out!

Now go practice your snow dance. And remember, if it’s not the OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED SNOW DANCE, it’s not going to work and I’ll direct my mental death ray at you next. Because I need a snow day. Right now.

2 comments:

  1. I like that graph at the end. Truth.

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  2. Do you have any idea how much snow it took to get us a day off in boarding school? A girl had to fall & BREAK HER LEG walking from the parking lot to the academic building for them to realize that it wasn't safe out. Then again, the school was like 85% residents, so they didn't think a measly foot or so of snow was enough reason to cancel classes when we only had to walk a dozen feet from our dorms to the classrooms.

    That is, until we had all that ice back in...well, you don't really need dates do you? ;-) Then we lost power (as in, NO HOT WATER AND NO WORKING KITCHEN!!) and it STILL took them twelve hours to realize that 100-some cold, hungry high school girls could get VERY VERY scary, VERY VERY fast.

    But I TOTALLY agree with you about getting all of your homework done ahead of time. Even stuff that's not due for a couple days. The more you get done, the longer you'll be out of school!! :-)

    I think I need to go back to school...

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