STOP THE PRESSES

Holy Mother of God...I agree with Barack Obama on something. Today he joked about his daughter's school being cancelled because of a little ice:

"My children's school was canceled today...Because of what? Some ice? . . . We're going to have to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town."

I agree, all of a sudden we're too quick to cancel things because of a little snow and ice. Last month I saw a woman on the news leaving the mall saying, "The second we saw flakes, we were out of here." I don't ever recall such hysteria over snow storms. Last I checked we live in the Northeast. It snows 4 months out of the year here. That's life. Deal with it. Chicago, which has much worse winters than us, apparently never cancels school, why are we so different?

Emily Rooney on WGBH's "Greater Boston" talked about this very issue tonight and shares the same views that I do. People are so skiddish and wimpy now when it comes to snow and it's become maddening. She's not sure who to blame: news, internet, potential lawsuits, but feels that people need to learn to cope.

Whenever my students complain about us having school on snowy days, I tell that the real world doesn't stop for bad weather. Prior to becoming a teacher, I went to work come hell or high water. I even went in during a state of emergency because the office messed up and recorded a pre-mature message saying we would be open but shortly thereafter changed it to say we would be closed. Those who checked the message after me got the correct message and did not come into work. There were a few of us in the same situation but we did get a day off to compensate us for it.

When I lived in South Boston and worked in Wellesley we had a nasty storm that completely buried my car. So, I woke up super early and took the Green Line to Newton and then caught the employee shuttle to the office. It took about 2 hours but I made it to work no problem. A co-worker who also lived in South Boston said he could not get to work but our boss made him come in saying if I could make it in from the same location, so could he. Yeah, he didn't like me very much that day.