The Snow Day Effect

Yet another reason home schooled kids are just a little bit off.

Everyone (or, almost everyone) knows that there is nothing better than a snow day.  Conversely, there is nothing worse than expecting a snow day, not doing any of your homework (but telling your mom you did), and then being awoken the next day by said mother only to realize that the weather people had once again blown the wintery precipitation completely out of proportion.  Oh, and the fact that your district is one of the only walking districts in the reporting area and having to deal with the fact that your school is THE ONLY ONE THAT STILL HAS CLASS.  This will take years to come to terms with, but is not, in fact, the Snow Day Effect.  The Snow Day Effect, henceforth referred to as the SDE, is the second worse thing that could NOT happen on a potential snow day.  This silver medal of snow day disappointments is not knowing you have a snow day until it is 10am and you've already slept in.  Confused?  See, I want to know I'm sleeping in.  I want to be made fully aware that I am sleeping at a time I would normally be sitting in a desk... WHILE I'M SLEEPING.  I don't think there is any better kind of sleep, and so I had a strict rule that my loving mum had to wake me up at my "normal" school time, tell me I have a snow day, and let me fall back into the most blissful of sleeps.  This, friends, is the SDE.  If, heaven forbid, my mom refrains from waking me up at an ungodly hour just to tell me that I can go back to sleep, the SDE is not achieved.  While I still may be scoring the same hours of extra shuteye, non-SDE sleep is just not the same.

Interestingly, I have grown to love the SDE so much, that I actually started setting my alarm hours before I have to wake up, not so that I am sure to arrive to any obligations in a timely manner, but rather so I can experience SDE sleep on a daily basis.  Awesome?  Yes.  I even let my alarm go off when there is NO specific time I need to be conscious (pause for consideration of the words "conscious", "conscience", and their specific etymologies), meaning that my atomic clock is going off at 7am even if I have no where to go until the afternoon.  So lovely.

On a similar note, if I actually have to wake up early and am worried about possibly oversleeping, my body will sometimes jolt me awake every hour, on the hour, starting at 3am.  This phenomenon can have one of two effects.  Either I a) have a repeated SDE experience or b) end up being so tired from the restlessness that I ultimately oversleep.  Less lovely.

Unfortunately, the era of the true SDE is a short one.  Once you go to college, you're usually stuck with waking up and checking the computer for a snow day.  Or, more often than not, you truly think that classes will be canceled, and they're not.  Sometimes, you make it all the way to campus, and though the university has made no official cancelation, your professor couldn't make it and somehow you didn't get the mass text.  Actually, that happened more when there wasn't snow.  And then you enter the real world, which, unless you're a teacher, does not include snow days.  Thus killing the pure SDE.  Unless you're in London.  Four inches and that whole place freaks out and shuts down.