The Pussification of America Continues: Anything Can Be a Snow Day Now

This much snow got school canceled today. I weep for my country. pic.twitter.com/IB27U2HFYJ

— Jerry Thornton (@jerrythornton1) February 13, 2017

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This was my driveway at Stately Thornton Manor on the South Shore of Boston Monday morning. After the snow had stopped. Before I’d run the snowblower through it. And 14 hours after we got the robocalls from the town canceling school. For the third day in a row. And through a couple of storms that maybe, maybe, might have required one day. And left a total accumulation of about four inches. I am not exaggerating.

Seriously, how has it come to this? How have we so pussified ourselves to the point where we can’t wake up in the morning and see how bad it is before the schools pull the trigger on the day? At the risk of sounding like some old fart rambling on about walking to school with a hot potato in my pocket to stay warm, this is a new phenomenon. Very new. I’m talking at most the last five or six years. This Weather Panic Syndrome, where every less than perfect forecast conjures up visions of buses careening off bridges to an icy, watery grave or something. And where schools think nothing now of canceling because it’s cold out. Not snowy. Not blizzardy. Not whiteout conditions with tiny crystals of frozen death whizzing at you sideways. Just because of low temperatures. Like heating systems don’t exist in buses or public buildings.

What’s happened to us? Weather hasn’t changed, we have. We’re the descendants of people who moved here from the Old World and stuck it out. Maybe they were too lazy to keep going to places where it was nicer and warmer. But they sucked it up, put coats and hats did and dealt with it. And they showed up at their jobs and schools unless it was something close to a real goddamned emergency.

Millennials get a bad rap. But this is not about them; it’s the people raising them and the schools. The kids don’t vote on this. The ones calling the shots are the adults who went to school themselves in any snow below six inches and lived to talk about it. But now they’re afraid of their own shadows and won’t be satisfied until everyone born after 2000 will ride out every dusting under their beds in terror. Thanks for ruining everything, schools. And have fun going to class in July.