Funny Guy Friday... Snow days ain't what they used to be...

     Funny Guy Friday is written each week by my husband Mark. So, I married a funny guy...
     I don't want to sound like an old curmudgeon... but back when I was a kid, it actually had to snow for us to get a day off of school.
     Today, even though the local weathermen are only hitting about .300, our school systems shut down as soon as the they hear the words "five" and "inches" in the same sentence.
     This is kind of ironic because when it actually does snow five inches, they seem satisfied with a measly two-hour delay.
     This week, the prognosticators got it right, and we actually got the eight inches they had predicted, and with that eight inches, the schools were closed for two days.
     For kids, there is nothing better.
     Presumably, they have already done their homework, and there is no way teachers can assign new work. They have a full day to frolic without deadlines.
     Unfortunately, my homeschooled boys attend tutorial classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and because of the stupid internet, the teachers are able to assign work even when schools are closed. What is the point of a snow day if you have to work? My boys have to pray for snow and a power outage.
     I remember the days when I was in school and they were predicting snow. I would wake up two hours early to tune into WPGC or Q107 to find out if school was cancelled or not.
     On a side note, at that time, WPGC and Q107 were two of the hippest pop music stations in the world... they had two crazy deejays in the "morning zoo." What a unique and wonderful idea! I am surprised that other stations around the country didn't try that format.
     What's that? Every station in the country had that same format? Nah, I don't believe that for a second... these guys were really wacky!
     Why we picked these wack-a-doos to give us the most important news of the day was beyond me. They were more concerned about playing a song backwards and having the caller guess the tune to win a free tee-shirt.
     The real school updates were on the grown-up news station, WTOP.
     The problem with WTOP was that you had to change your clock radio to a.m. and then try to tune it so the voices were not completely overcome by the static at the 1500 band. This was a feat that was dang near impossible.
     Anyway, once you got the word, either way, your kid-logic kicked in.
     If schools were closed, you jubilantly hopped out of bed and started the day two hours earlier than usual. You would be bouncing off the walls waiting for your mom to get up so you could do something... anything! If, on the other hand, the school's start time was merely delayed, you were soooo tired that you had to go back to sleep only to be exhausted two hours later when mom came into to blast you out of bed.
     Then as we got older, we began to hear the rumors. Hey, your sister's friend Susan is dating the cousin of the Superintendent's niece, and she heard that they already made the decision to close schools tomorrow.  
     Those predictions were rarely correct.
     Still... in those days... there was nothing better than a snow day.
     For an adult, the day is just one big pain in the rear.
     Unless there is so much snow that everything is closed, you have to go to work. The exception, of course, is the adult government worker. In fact, the adult government workers have it better than the kids because they don't have any deadlines in the first place. I wish I were a government worker.
     Here is a little-known secret: I worked for the federal government for three days.
     I was attending law school in the evenings and needed to make some money, so I filled out an application. Without any interview, I somehow got hired to work at the Department of the Treasury's Greenbelt field office. This was perfect because it was only twenty minutes from home, and I did not have to actually venture into D.C.
     I started work with five other new employees, and we were assigned to a young woman for training. One of our duties was to process new orders for coins offered to collectors. This was fairly simple as the main skill requirement was having a firm grasp of the alphabet. I finished first in our group and was sitting waiting for the others to catch up. As I sat and waited, and waited and waited, our trainer was skeptical. Apparently, I was a little too fast for her and she was sure that I had somehow misunderstood my task.
     After a review of my work, I graded out at 100%.
     I would like to report that there were other duties, but alphabetizing was all we did for the first day. I spent most of that day waiting for the rest of the group to finish and listening to our fearless leader give her critique of the previous night's Starsky and Hutch episode.
     What a realistic portrayal of police work. God I love that Huggy Bear!
     At the end of the day, I was advised that there would be more of this mind numbing work for day two... so rest up and be ready. I had nightmares that Starsky and Hutch were going to jumble up the  order of the alphabet. Fortunately, they did not, so I woke up on day two with a plan. I brought all of my law books, figuring that I could alphabetize my orders and then read as my co-workers caught up.
     This was a great plan except that security informed me that I was not allowed to bring any books or my backpack onto the work floor for fear that I would smuggle stuff out of the office. This was a bummer because not only did I want to study, I also intended to sneak coin collectors' orders out of Greenbelt in a diabolical effort to shut down the government. Mwaha ha ha! (if you could see me now, I am twisting my mustache and laughing a really loud fake laugh... Mwaha ha ha ha!).
     Day three, I arrived at work and walked right into my boss's office and quit! Quite a resume builder if I say so myself.
     The funny thing was, I remember exactly what she said when I told her I was quitting... Wow, that is disappointing. We have been watching you over the past two days, and we thought you would have been a supervisor in no time.
     Having just quit, I had no problem asking... Why, because I know my alphabet? 
     Every day that the federal government is code red, I wish that I had never quit that job.
     Then again, if I were home, I'd probably have to spend the day helping the boys with their schoolwork.