Spring Break
The Daily OrangeSyracuse winters plow through childhood wonder of snow days
By Taylor Engler
Posted: 4/10/06, 11:29 PM EST Section: Pulp
Syracuse University has ruined my winter spirit. Ever since elementary school, I can remember looking at those few flakes of rare Missouri snow falling from the skies with just one hope in mind - snow days. Yes indeed, with the first sign of snowfall, the weather would send my fellow Missourians into a frenzy. Parents would scurry to the store to horde milk and bread, sure that the predicted 2 inches would have them homebound for days, while I and my fellow youngsters looked out and egged on the heavens.
Before I came to college, I thought there was no better feeling in the world than waking up to see the white, rushing to the television and anxiously scanning the screen for that key school district closing. What better way to spend a day that would have involved adding and subtracting numbers than adding snow to my snowman and subtracting hot cocoa from my mug?
"We did have a ton of hope every time we saw a single snowflake," said Jennifer Chaput, a freshman art photography major from Illinois. "Those days were awesome because a lot of the time the snow would stop after an hour or two, and we still wouldn't have to go to school."
A wise first-grader once told me that if I turned my pajamas inside out and jumped on the bed singing "Let it Snow" the night before a predicted snowfall, my jovial dance would help the clouds open their floodgates and almost guarantee a day off school. This message spread like wildfire through my school and the areas surrounding it, and sure enough, on many a blistery night a bouncing kid in backwards batman boxers could be spotted through many a frosted-over window. I even took this trick so to heart that well into my senior year I found myself jumping in hopes of a snow day, with the only change on the label of my pajamas from Disney to Victoria's Secret.
However, after what seems like a decade of winter here in the cold 'Cuse, the snow dances of my yesteryears seem like a diluted dream. I sat staring at April snow wondering how I once could ever have wanted such a terrible thing to continue. The roles of the seasons in my life seem to have been reversed in the terrible imbalance of warm and cold that plagues our university. Now the first sign of sunshine has me throwing on my bikini and heading for the lawn in front of my dorm, convincing myself that I can ignore the frigid wind if only to soak up a few rays. My hopes for snow days disappeared with the warm weather when I realized that in Syracuse, even a few feet of snow won't stop my professors from holding class.
Now that the sun seems to finally be peaking through the gray skies, we have to lasso that sucker and reel it in before Jack Frost decides to come parading back. So let's hear it for a sun day, throw on our pajamas the wrong way, climb up on a bouncy bed and sing "Good Day Sunshine" and goodbye to winter … finally.
Before I came to college, I thought there was no better feeling in the world than waking up to see the white, rushing to the television and anxiously scanning the screen for that key school district closing. What better way to spend a day that would have involved adding and subtracting numbers than adding snow to my snowman and subtracting hot cocoa from my mug?
"We did have a ton of hope every time we saw a single snowflake," said Jennifer Chaput, a freshman art photography major from Illinois. "Those days were awesome because a lot of the time the snow would stop after an hour or two, and we still wouldn't have to go to school."
A wise first-grader once told me that if I turned my pajamas inside out and jumped on the bed singing "Let it Snow" the night before a predicted snowfall, my jovial dance would help the clouds open their floodgates and almost guarantee a day off school. This message spread like wildfire through my school and the areas surrounding it, and sure enough, on many a blistery night a bouncing kid in backwards batman boxers could be spotted through many a frosted-over window. I even took this trick so to heart that well into my senior year I found myself jumping in hopes of a snow day, with the only change on the label of my pajamas from Disney to Victoria's Secret.
However, after what seems like a decade of winter here in the cold 'Cuse, the snow dances of my yesteryears seem like a diluted dream. I sat staring at April snow wondering how I once could ever have wanted such a terrible thing to continue. The roles of the seasons in my life seem to have been reversed in the terrible imbalance of warm and cold that plagues our university. Now the first sign of sunshine has me throwing on my bikini and heading for the lawn in front of my dorm, convincing myself that I can ignore the frigid wind if only to soak up a few rays. My hopes for snow days disappeared with the warm weather when I realized that in Syracuse, even a few feet of snow won't stop my professors from holding class.
Now that the sun seems to finally be peaking through the gray skies, we have to lasso that sucker and reel it in before Jack Frost decides to come parading back. So let's hear it for a sun day, throw on our pajamas the wrong way, climb up on a bouncy bed and sing "Good Day Sunshine" and goodbye to winter … finally.
