Two Hour Delay

The two hour delay. It’s merely the promise to a full on cancelled school day. The kid brother to the big kahuna. The best are the two hour delays that are called the night before, which is what we’re currently working with. Phone rings at 7:50pm last night and we answer to a recording from the school system. “Hello. This is Dr. David Hoffert, superintendent of Warsaw Community Schools. We are currently operating under a two hour delay for Wednesday, February 26th. Thank you, and have a great evening.” The kids sigh, knowing they can spend an extra couple hours doing whatever kids do these days. Watch videos on Youtube of disembodied heads floating in the the far right corner of the screen as a video game is being played, eat Cheez Its in the chair talking about their day to two tired parents, or maybe doing nothing.

There weren’t phone calls from the school in the 1980s. You had to sit and watch the local news at either 6pm or 10pm. Very rarely was there a school delay or cancellation called at 6pm, so you had to stay up till 10(11pm in those winter months.) I was typically sent off to bed before then by my parents, so I laid in bed awake with a little transistor radio that looked like a Nestle Crunch Bar(my grandpa was a salesman for Nestle for years.) I’d lie under the covers listening to terrible 70s and 80s music, or local basketball games, or cheap local commercials for law offices and Penguin Point in order to get to the news and hopefully school delays and cancellations.

It was an arduous process, but necessary if I wanted an uninterrupted morning of sleeping in. Nothing worse that waking in the morning and halfway getting around before finding out school is delayed or cancelled. Your hair is already styled, the milk poured over the Frosted Flakes, and you’re nearly fully awake when school is called is such a wasted sleeping in opportunity.

I wish we had two hour delays and cancellations for work. That’d be great, man. I could be perfectly coifed and all dapper dan’d up and ready to clock in, but as soon as I heard the day was cancelled I could be back in bed in 5 minutes snoring away. No problemo. Last time work gave the option of staying home was last January. The temps dropped to -35 degrees, so they said you could stay home and it wouldn’t be counted against you. Of course I stayed home. I work on the dock unloading trucks so as soon as those garage doors would open the temp would drop about 25 degrees. I was sick that week anyways, having missed three days of work with influenza. Before that time, it was during the polar vortex of 2014. Crazy times.

So it’s a two hour delay today, with the option for full on cancellation. We’ll see what happens. Me? Duty calls. Time for work; rain, snow, lousy attitude, or shine.