Little Johnny Is A Popsicle

Let me enlighten you to the situation that is going down the Midwest right now, specifically Chicago. It is cold. Really, really cold. According to Weather.com it is supposed to be -9 degrees tonight. Which with the windchill will feel like -25. But even with these sub-arctic like temperatures it continues to snow at alarming rates. This mornings commute to the office was particularly fun. My normally 20 minute drive took an hour and 15 minutes. I had one co-worker who was on the road for three hours. There are a handful of people who didn’t even come into today because of the weather (I know you are reading this entry from your house while wearing sweatpants and I hate you. I might have to super glue your mouse to the mouse pad or something…)

But it wasn’t the bitter cold or the inches of snow that made my commute horrible; it was the school buses.

There is nothing like an entire main road coming to a screeching halt because the local school bus needs to pick a kid up who is moving at a snails pace because he is dressed like an Eskimo. Which begs me to ask the question: Why the hell isn’t school cancelled?

I know when I was a kid the earth had to be in a near apocalyptic state for the powers that be to cancel school, but even I remember a few days of extreme cold and listening to the radio to find out I didn’t have to go. Which meant an entire day of cartoons and Barbie dolls.

And now with the whimpy way kids are raised I am surprised there wasn’t some sort of community wide outcry that sending the kids to school in this weather is a form of child abuse (which is might be but seeing as how that term is a tad overused it has lost some of it potency).

But what did the parents do instead? While the buses will a thorn in my side all of the extra cars on the road because Mom and Dad felt the need to drive Little Johnny to school so he could sit on his heated leather seat and watch “Finding Nemo” on the screen was like me flinging my whole body into the briar patch, naked, and then going for a swim in the Dead Sea.

After my commute this morning I might put on my citizen hat and write a letter to my local school board chastising them, not for making kids go to school but for mucking up the roads and making it more difficult for me to get to work.

~The Office Scribe