Snow days mean many things to schoolchildren with unexpected break

In a dreamy morning stupor, I turned on the radio and placed it next to my head on the pillow. The deejay ticked off the names of schools that were closed because of snow. Finally, it came. No school in Orono. I called to my daughter to turn off her alarm. She closed her door and that was the last I heard from her for several hours.

Snow days. They are always with us here in Maine, and we’ve racked up a couple already this school year. For parents, snow days can be the terrors of the season. For many kids, however, they are little unexpected gifts of freedom and fun.

Younger children often head for the hills — the good sledding hills, that is. But for many older kids, the glamour of snow play has worn off. For older ones, “snow day” is synonymous with “vacation.” As in relax, kick back, take it easy, chill.

“Usually, I just hang around at home,” said Phoebe Hamelman, a seventh-grader at Whiting Village School. “Today I’m just helping my mom clean. But other days I’ll have a friend over and we’ll listen to music and talk.”

Fifth-grader Maria Millard said she started hoping for the snow day the night before.

“I had my fingers crossed the whole time,” said the 10-year-old, who invited a girlfriend over for the day. “It’s pretty exciting. We played cards. We played with my gerbil. We rearranged my room. I wish every day was a snow day.”

Kristy Townsend, a 15-year-old freshman at Orono High School, said she started thinking about the snow day the night before, too.

“I didn’t even do my homework,” she said, adding that she was glad she got to sleep until noon.

The next town over, in Stillwater, John Bapst High School freshman Sarah Emerson was working on a jigsaw puzzle. She had risen that morning around 5 a.m. to do her homework, which she, too, had deferred because of the predicted snow day. Her mother had agreed to wake her early to get the work done, but when no announcement had been made, Sarah was up with her head in the books. As soon as the news came over the airwaves, Sarah went back to bed. When she finally got up at 9 a.m., she helped with shoveling, tried (unsuccessfully) to make a homestyle version of Silly Putty, and listened to a recording of “Nirvana Unplugged.” She loves snow days, she said, but she wouldn’t want three in a row.

“I think we should space them out because I need them at different times of the year,” she explained.

Each time the phone rang at our house — and anyone with a teen knows the phone can ring a lot when the kids are home from school — I’d asked the caller what he or she was doing today. Playing computer games. Sleeping. Beating up my brother. Cleaning my trombone. Writing letters. Nothing.

Was all that better than going to school?

Absolutely.

And that came from A students, and C students, and my-grades-are-so-so students. From ones who like school and ones who don’t.

Only one, Bangor High School senior Tobias Petros, said he wasn’t so thrilled with snow days.

“The next day,” he explained, “teachers double everything up.”

But, he might not be the best person to ask, he added.

“It doesn’t matter to me this year. They make them up at the end of the year and I’m not gonna be here, so it’s great.”

And actually, one other kid was not so nuts about staying home — though not for the reasons you might imagine.

“I can tell you I’m not happy it’s a snow day,” said my 15-year-old daughter. “I wanted to go to gym class and play volleyball.”