Remember to take a break if your arms go numb!

MPR's Bob Collins had a link that caught my eye on his News Cut Blog today:

4) THE FUN OF SNOW DAYS
A Rochester Post Bulletin columnist makes a great point today. Kids don't have the fun of snow days we used to have when technology was in its relative infancy.

While the snow fell outside, we would go to bed with our radios within arm's reach. In the morning, as soon as our groggy little eyes opened, we would snatch the radio and lay huddled in our beds waiting for our school to be announced. The moment we heard the name of our town, we would fly out of bed and get dressed faster than we ever would on a regular school day. At that point, we would race back to the radio to listen for the next round of announcements. We just had to hear it a second time before we could celebrate with certainty.

It's also what introduced generations of kids to the value of radio.

I had the same experience in upper elementary school through high school (late '80s through the mid '90s), waking up excitedly to find out from Steve Cochran whether I get to stay home to eat my Halloween candy and watch TV. I have fond memories of epic sledding expeditions with friends in the neighborhood (I think it was on a snow day that my brother found $42 in cash in an alley we were trudging through), often followed by sessions in front of the Nintendo in soggy snow pants.

I wonder how many kids just don't listen any more, even those who, unlike the Rochester writer's example, don't have access to the internet. Melissa is a Minneapolis high school teacher, and her school told the faculty that last Monday a couple dozen kids showed up for class. That's a couple dozen who were not in proximity to an operating locally-tuned radio that morning. In my day [holy crap what am I becoming?], the radio in general, and KDWB in particular, seemed inescapable in the schoolyard culture.

This is the kind of thing about which I'd love to do a study: ask the students who knew about the snow day how they found out about it. It should be a longitudinal study, collecting data at the same handful of schools every time there's a snow day over a matter of decades (starting three decades ago). When I become independently wealthy, this is the sort of thing I'll do with my time, as well as funding a serious linguistic study investigating the origins of "Duck Duck Gray Duck" and its unique isolation in this state.*

* Please note: comments that claim or imply the "correctness" or "superiority" of childrens' games with the word goose in their names will not be approved. This dictatorship is benevolent, but I have my limits. Please note that I previously approved a spam comment because it was in Japanese Kanji script, and I thought that was cool. So that's how much I value your opinion on Duck Duck Gray Duck: less than Japanese spam. Sensitive much? Yes.

Not good with needles

As a kid, I was never been particularly good with needles, and I had a mental hierarchy of the awfulness of encounters with them: the regular fingertip pinprick was Bad and Hated, but at the bottom of the scale. That such an easy needle prick was so disliked should tell you how I felt about shots, which were more loathed as needle gauge and depth and volume of injection increased. The worst of the worst, which thankfully I didn't often have cause to encounter, were long intravenous needles.

When I was in my mid-to-late-single-digits, I had to get a particular series of vaccinations, the first two about a month apart. My recollection is that these were thick needles buried deep into the muscle (such as it was) of the outer thigh. They sucked. Anyway, I got the first one, and hated it so much that the next month when I returned to the pediatrician for round two, I decided I'd had enough.

My pediatrician's office at the time was in a small round office building in Edina. This one:


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It was the former home of a savings & loan, and featured a center hallway that circumnavigated the building. The building was small enough that the doctors' office was the only tenant. This layout suggested a strategy: run.

It wasn't an elegant or complete plan, but it did afford me additional, precious, unpunctured minutes as I sprinted around the building. I don't remember whether I made it all the way around or perhaps made multiple complete circuits. You would think I'd be intercepted by my poor mother or the RN or an assistant if I crossed back in front of my assigned exam room. What I do know is that at some point, I realized that I couldn't run forever and made my next tactical move, ducking into a bathroom and locking the door.

Looking back, I can see my folly. If I had it to do all over again, I'd make damn sure that I was out of the line-of-sight of any pursuers or informants before I ducked in there. I'd have opened and shut the door in a smooth motion, as silently as possible, so as to not give away my location. I might have even selected an escape route that wasn't a dead end. But I speak with the benefit of rational hindsight and with years of experience watching the action movies and playing the video games that impart these important lessons to us in our adolescence. And I have the further benefit of better information -- how was I supposed to know they had keys to the bathroom?

Yes, there are plenty of things I'd have done differently if I had known better. I could have spared myself the indignity of being pulled out from under the sink of a darkened bathroom and held down by multiple assistants while the nurse administered the Hated shot. At the time I'm pretty sure I didn't know what my mother was so embarrassed about: she wasn't the one who got caught!

Some time later I got the third shot, and had mellowed enough to just deal with it. By my later teenage years I was just kind of squicked out by needles; Pulp Fiction became a favorite movie of mine, but the close-up interlude of heroin use and later adrenaline shot moment were all but unwatchable (incidentally, hatred of needles is an excellent barrier to entry of IV drug use, not that there weren't plenty of other deterrents). At present I certainly don't LIKE shots, I can reliably go into a zen-like state of acceptance when I have to get one.

PS: All apologies to my mother and to the 198x staff of Edina Pediatrics, especially those whose duties occasionally include twerp restraint.

I call the big one "bitey"

I recounted the following story at Thanksgiving dinner, and my Dad encouraged me to blog it. This is an early memory I have of using logic to solve a problem.

So, one time I was at Chuck E. Cheese at Southdale Square for my brother's birthday. I think I was about seven, but as we've established, I'm an unreliable narrator. Anyway, under the stage with all the creepy animatronic animals, there was a kid-sized mouse hole. Through the hole there was a little room, almost a crawl-space, with a strobe light. Essentially it was a little kid rave, so you could go in there with your E and glowstick to "Smack My Bitch Up." Except this was 1986 instead of the mid-90s, The Prodigy didn't exist yet, and the robot band was playing a crappy cover of "Surfin' USA" with the lyrics changed to something about "If everybody had a birthday..."

I was in there with a couple of kids I didn't know, thinking it was really cool that everything looked all slow-motion (this was definitely before Pokémon ruined strobes for everyone), when an entire birthday party's worth of kids (not my brother's party, incidentally) piled into the Rave Hole (TM) like frat boys in a phone booth. Now, I'm not usually claustrophobic, but this freaked me out. I was pressed against the back wall by a mass of writhing kid, and started to fear that I wasn't going to get out I have to get out how am I going to get out?

I formulated a plan. I executed the plan. I bit the nearest limb.

Not enough to leave a mark. Just enough to get the appropriate attention.

My unknown victim yelled "there's a biter in here!", and like "Fire!" in a crowded theater, the words did the trick. The other children fled for the safety of their extremities, and I joined them, worrying aloud to anyone who'd listen, "somebody bit one of the other kids in there!" My innocent bystanding established, I nonchalantly disappeared into the sea of pizza and skee-ball.

That's the closest I've ever been to being James Bond.

In hindsight, I could've achieved the same result without biting the other kid if I'd just yelled "there's a biter in here!" Damn, now I've ruined it for myself. Let's pretend I didn't write that last part, ok? Thanks.

I leave you with a bonus, a creepier Chuck E. Cheese picture. I can still feel his hugs: