Snow Days

A lot of friends and family have been excited over the last couple of days because of the snowstorm that hit the southeast. Many of these people have rarely, if ever, seen snow! They have been positively giddy at the prospect of a day off from school or work! All this excitement has taken me down memory lane to the snow days of my childhood.

Growing up in South Carolina back in the day, we didn't get the kind of snowstorms that our northern neighbors did. But when it did snow in SC, we took the day off. There was no school. Many businesses did not open. Much of that was due to the fact that because we seldom had significant snowfall, we were not equipped (with snow plows, etc.) to deal with it. So, we stayed home!

Those were such fun times. We layered on all the clothes we could find......back then there were no down-filled jackets, no lightweight-yet-warm-and-waterproof fabrics, so we wore lots of clothes! Because our gloves and mittens weren't waterproof either, we often put plastic bags secured with rubber bands over the gloves in an attempt to keep our hands dry. Then, sufficiently bundled up, out the door we went to play.....snowmen, snow angels, snowball fights....playing until we were too cold and wet to stand it any more, and then we came back in, stripped off all the wet clothes which were hung to dry in anticipation of our next outdoor venture, put on dry clothes and made hot chocolate. Made it, not with a packet of mix and some water that were microwaved, but with real milk heated on a stove, into which we stirred the chocolate and then topped it with marshmallows! Yum!

Indoor activity on snow days included board games, blocks or Lincoln Logs, maybe reading a book. We did not play video games or pop a DVD into the player or listen to our I-Pod......those things hadn't been invented yet!! But, oh what fun we had!!