A Crime Against Childhood

There is no greater human joy than waking up to a winter wonderland that, with its frosty magic, also cancelled school. Well, no more. Because schools are cancelling snow days. Some school systems have decided, "This way when there's too much snow to physically drag students in, we can still mentally drag them in."

[Grey] Wha..? Who di...? How...? What kind of villains are you?

[Grey] Gah! We don't all agree. This is horrifying! Internet, where are you? Where's hashtag SaveSnowDays to protect us?

[Boring Bureaucrat] Shhhh, we don't need that.

[Grey] No! You cannot take away the human experience of being on a dark winter's night, unable to face the next day. Then, when thin clouds appear on the horizon giving you faint hope, you beg with all of your belief to make it happen. And when it does happen, it is the most epic experience of low to high, combining the triple joys of snow, freedom, and getting out of something that you totally shouldn't have. There are only so many days of such great glory in a human life.

But, say some school boards, and I fear this snow day cancellation pestilence will spread because the school system, with its bureaucracies and committees, loves its checkboxes checked, its percentages maxed, and its attendance punch cards punched. Snow days mess all that up.

So the system, wielding the ultimate banality of evil, cancels snow days. Look, I'm just going to say it. Yes, I am going to play the "won't somebody please think of the children" card.

[Under his breath] Teenagers, I know you hate this, but it's in your best interest to roll with it.

But seriously, protecting snow days is what this card was made to play. Those who want to cancel snow days should be forced to look into the wide, excited eyes of a little girl, waking up to experience her very first snow day and tell her,

[Boring Bureaucrat] No! You can't play outside.

[Wide-eyed little Girl] Why?

[Boring Bureaucrat] Because it's super important that today, right now, you learn about what a newspaper frontage, in England, three hundred years ago, thought was important and you also must know the French conjugation of the verb "to have fun."

[Boring Bureaucrat] This... this is what matters.

[Grey] If you can do that while thinking you are doing good, you are a heartless monster extinguishing the light of a child. A child who, while on their kiddie conference call with their ikkle headset, listening to a teacher tell them, will resolve the cognitive dissonance by deciding, and with a sigh say,

No! This shall not pass. Don't cancel snow days. Cancel kill joy committees. Hashtag SaveSnowDays.