School closings

When we woke up this morning (Monday, January 24, 2011), they were listing school-closings on the radio.
“For what?” my wife cried.
“Cold weather, I suppose,“ I said.
I played a flashlight on the thermometer outside our window at our house in West Bloomfield.
Almost 10 below zero.
“They never closed school for cold weather when I was a kid,” my wife said. “What kinda pansies are they raising?
They only closed school if it snowed so much the school-buses couldn’t get through, but they tried.
The idea was to get kids to school so they could take attendance to get the state money. Then they’d send ya home.”
“School-buses,” I shouted. “I never had no school-buses!
I always walked to school, 50 miles each way, and uphill both comin’ and goin’.
And the wind was always in my face. Turn around, and the wind reversed too.
And it was always snowing; winter and summer.”
“And I had to wait for the school-bus out at the end of our driveway,” my wife added.
“No mom in her minivan, and no closet-sized booth built by dad.”
“I drive through Bloomfield village in the morning,” I said; “and I get stopped by school-buses pickin’ up kids three blocks from school.
Is it any wonder we hear weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about childhood obesity?”

• “We” is me and my wife of 43+ years, “Linda.”
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. Adjacent is the town of East Bloomfield, and the village of Bloomfield is in it. —It’s about four miles away.