Sunny and WHAT??

by Uncle Hans

Monday morning I got up and it was -23. That’s not that unusual for here, in fact it hit that last week one day. I sat outside in the hot tub and watched a beautiful sunrise, as I usually do. I wear a stocking hat when it is below zero. On the way to work, I met Ian coming home from school. “He must have forgotten something.”, I thought. Turns out that school was cancelled! At -23!! One bank thermometer had -32, but the other bank had -18. No one could seem to agree on the temp, but they cancelled school. The fear is that some little one will get frostbite waiting for the bus. It’s all hype on TV and the radio that scares people and makes them over-react. I don’t remember any little one ever getting frostbite waiting for the bus. Parents should dress those kids or take them to the bus in their cars. What is the message when you cancel school for cold? The kids hear “school is not important”. Everything else was open on Monday, everyone else had to go to work. What other message could the kids get?


Of course you are all waiting for a “when I was a kid………...” story, so I will tell one. When I was a kid, at -20, the girls got to wear pants under their dresses or skirts to ride the bus (but they had to take them off at school, no pants for girls in our dress code). At -19, they waited for the bus in bare legs! Any frostbite? Not that I can remember. We have become so soft when it comes to cold. There is a whole country north of here where it occasionally DOES get cold! I imagine they have some good laughs at us and our school closings for cold. If they had that rule, they would miss 30 days each year! And the cold generates such talk! “I can’t remember it being this cold” What a crock! It’s this cold every year, usually two or three spells! I thought we were in Global Warming!


Sunny and –WHATEVER!