You went to bed with thoughts of a snow day bouncing around in your head.
Then you would wake up. The first thing you'd do is look outside. Snow piled up 10-12 inches? Yessssssssssss! No school!
But what about those two-to-three-inch storms? What about if it was 6 a.m. and it was barely snowing? What if Don Kent or another Boston meteorologist messed up? How would you know if your community had school that day?
Nowadays school systems send out group texts, or there is a robocall.
When I was a kid, the information wasn't so lightning fast. You could turn on the local radio station. But most of us would turn on the TV to one of the Boston stations - Channel 5 was usually on in our home - and you would breathlessly watch the bottom of the screen for the all-important cancellation scroll.
I grew up in Lowell, Mass., so if the station was on the letter M you had to wait an eternity. The wait was cruel and seemed forever. While we waited for Lowell to appear (and pray that it would), you would check for area towns. If Tewksbury, Tyngsboro and Westford didn't have school that day, you would feel great.
But if surrounding towns weren't listed, a pit in your stomach would grow. Instead of having a snow day and getting together with your friends, I knew the drill. No snow day meant getting ready for another day at Sacred Heart School. It meant my sister, brother and I would be walking up the street dressed in our uniforms ready to tackle another school day.
There are 18 cities/towns in Massachusetts that begin with the letter L. In Eastern and Central Mass., that means we would have to wait for Lancaster, Lawrence, Leicester, Leominster, Lexington and Littleton before we got to Lowell.
The wait was maddening. But it was fun. We live today in a world where everything has to be instantaneous. Sometimes I miss the days when you would have to wait for good news ... or another school day.
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