Sudbury Public: Open

A Snow day eve is like the rambunctious younger sister of Christmas Eve. Unlike Christmas, where her arrival is anticipated months in advance, the Snow Day sporadically and abruptly pops up, making its intensity much greater with its relatively little warning. Christmas is the Beezus; Snow Day is the Ramona.

Many a snowy winter night was spent staring at the family room television, watching the blue scrolling school closures along the bottom of the screen and praying that “Sudbury Public: closed” would scroll across after all the St.’s, Stow, and Sturbridge announcements. I remember praying with all my might with fingers crossed, eyes scrunched shut, hands clenched, my saying: “Please God, if you give us a snow day, I will never make fun of Matt again. I promise.” I busted out every trick I could, including doing all of my homework, in hopes that my efforts would somehow persuade the snow gods and/or our school superintendant to cancel school. Usually, my praying to the Gods did not work, as I soon learned that our superintendant did not believe in snow days.

Meanwhile, insert my “Nanook of the North” father in said family room. Bob lives for Nor’easters and usually egged on our anticipation solely because his excitement was so contagious. As a self-proclaimed “Snow Emergency Specialist,” Bob usually has his snow blower greased up for winter at the end of September and he has served as our in-house meteorologist since my birth. In his efforts to keep the most up-to-date timeline and snowfall estimate, he would poll different news outlets to find the general storm consensus. He always sided with the guy predicting the most snow, only adding fuel to our snowfever fires.

Fifteen(ish) years later, the stage is still set very much the same. Yes, I have moved out, but on Nor’easter eves, you will most likely find me in the very spot I was in as a 6 year old, doing the same things (partially do to the five minute commute, that had I gone home would be at least 90 minutes longer.) I am 24 years old and I still catch myself obsessively and repetitively scanning the school closure section, and watching my dad get all rambunctious re: snow fall updates.

…and the 7 year old in me still gets mad when Sudbury and Wayland Publics are the only two school districts in the state open for normal business during any kind of winter emergency. We can just forget about the two of them closing for anything short of Hell freezing over, but if they do…that is quite a storm.