Snow day!!!

That is music to a school age child’s ears. You watch the weather in anticipation of waking up with a white blanket of fun covering the ground.

Children even consider not doing their homework or taking a bath, thinking there will be no school the following day.

With the recent snow day, it made me reminisce again to my childhood and what snow days held for me. My mother would let us sleep late and then when we did get up and eat breakfast, we immediately began dressing in the most clothes humanly possible to still be able to walk around in.

I remember layering up so much your joints would not bend. If we didn’t have snow boots, we would tie plastic grocery bags over our shoes to keep our feet dry and even put socks on our hands for gloves or over our gloves. Out the door we went!

Now growing up in the Hogback Community, we were never lacking friends to go sledding with.

We all got together and went to some pretty steep hills. We didn’t have plastic sleds like the ones kids have today. We may have an inner tube from an old tire, a car hood, or one of those wooden sleds with the metal rails.

I can remember sledding over a very steep hill on a car hood with several of my cousins when the ground left from under us. When we finally hit the ground it had knocked the breath clean out of me!

I was once on a wooden sled with my cousin in front and me in the back. We went over a hill and at the bottom we hit an old shed and he got a bloody nose, that was the reddest blood I have ever seen in all the white snow.

We would stay out for hours and we never complained of being cold. Sometimes we made ramps to sled over, built snowmen, or made forts to have snow ball fights out of.

When we came inside, we warmed by the wood stove and hung all our wet clothes there to dry. My mom always had us hot chocolate waiting to warm us up.

By the time we got our gloves and socks off our hands and feet were bright red and near frostbite. We maybe then played Monopoly the rest of the day.

Snow days weren’t days you stayed in the house on Facebook or playing video games. They were a time when you took advantage of being outside because you didn’t know when you might have another snow opportunity.

You will never look back in life and say, “Remember when I spent 10 hours watching TV, playing video games, or sleeping”. You will remember the times you took advantage of an opportunity to have a good time and make memories that you can share and will last a lifetime!

Happy sledding and bring on the snow days!

Tammy Waid McClellan

P.S. Photo credits to Carrie and Emma McClellan in honor of their snow day!