We don’t get a lot of snow in Oklahoma. Aside from a couple of big ice storms over the years and the Snowpocalypse of 2011 that dumped 17” on us on Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, Oklahoma isn’t much of a winter playground. We usually get one good snow every winter, typically after the first of the year, somewhere in the 5-6” range (case in point, we got almost seven inches last week and there’s still a patch of snow on my front lawn as I write this).
Most school districts in the state build in “snow days” into their yearly calendar that don’t get fully used most years especially now that they can conduct “distance learning” days (thank you, COVID). For the uninitiated, “snow days” are days that get canceled because of snow that doesn’t have to be made up at the end of the year. When I was a kid, we lived for snow days however the only way you typically knew it was a snow day was to get up at the break of dawn on a given day that there was snow and watch the news to see if your school name was scrolling across the bottom of the screen (on the rare occasion it announced the night before but usually it was the morning of). If your school was listed the day was yours!
One day, early in 1982, the forecast called for snow. There was no snow that evening, but the weatherman said it was expected to move in overnight. So, early the next morning, I dragged myself out of bed to peek out of my bedroom window, hoping to see snow. Drats! The ground was as bare as it was the night before so off to school I went. I lived less than three blocks from my school and both my parents worked so unless there was a torrential downpour, I walked or rode my bike to and from school every day. On this particularly cold day, for whatever reason, I decided to walk to school instead of employing the faster mode of transportation. Not long after school started, the snow started. Not much at first but as the morning progressed, the snow got heavier. And heavier. I was twelve years old sixth grader at this time and all my friends and I could think about that morning were the epic snowball fights we were about to have at recess. However, right before our normal recess time, the principal’s voice crackled over the room speaker to announce that not only was outside recess canceled but that school was being dismissed at noon. He went on to give special instructions for the kids who rode the buses and instructed teachers to allow/help the kids who normally had people picking them up after school to use the room phone to call and make arrangements for early pick up (each room had a landline phone at the time). That left the rest of us latchkey kids looking around and wondering “What about us?”
We soon found out “What about us”. They just turned us loose. There wasn’t a school portal to alert parents of what was transpiring, there wasn’t a website or social media or anything. So, our parents just didn’t know that they turned us loose into the snowy weather to fend for ourselves to get home. We were twelve, though, and relished any opportunity we were afforded to play in the snow. Do you think any of us latch keys went straight home? Not on your freaking life! We played. We hit the playground and had snowball fights. There was a large city park a couple of blocks from our school, Sooner Park, that had all manner of hills and slopes, so several of us dug a piece of cardboard out of the school dumpster and went sledding. They failed to feed us lunch before school was dismissed and we were hungry, so we went to someone’s house and ate what we could find. Then it was back out into the snow we went. Nearly all afternoon.
My sister was in kindergarten at the time at the same school, and when they canceled school, my mom got a phone call about picking my sister up early. She, in turn, tried to get them to relay a message to me about picking me up at the same time, but the message never got to me. So, when they shut my dad’s office down because of the storm and he got home to find my frantic mother calling around trying to find me, he set out looking for me. It never dawned on me that my parents a) didn’t know school was out or b) had no earthly idea where I was or what I was doing. Didn’t dawn on me until, as we were walking down the middle of one of our neighborhood streets having the time of our lives, a familiar car came driving up to us. It was my dad. And, surprise of all surprises, he wasn’t at all happy with me. I got in the car, and he drove me home. In silence.
We ended up getting over seven inches of snow from that storm and were out of school for two more days. And again, surprise of all surprises, I was grounded for both of those days for the little stunt I pulled. I had to settle for playing with my sister in the snow. Looking back on it now, though, the fun we had that afternoon was totally worth it.
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