Another reason the Internet is bad for education...

These days you can get a list of school closings on the internet... sigh.

When I was a kid, we listened to WCCO for school closings.

On impossibly snowy mornings, we'd listen carefully for our school. The announcers read the most recently added schools first, then read all the closings / late starts in alphabetical order.

On days like today when much of the state is snowed in, there would be no commercials and no other news -- this WAS the news that counted, at least when you are 8.

Snowy mornings and WCCO taught me a few things:

• Patience -- waiting for your school closings is even more difficult than waiting for Christmas... because you weren't so sure your school would be on the list.
• Regional geography -- If your local schools were on the list, it was pretty likely that your school would be too... So, it was important to know where most of the schools were.
• Alphabetizing -- When the difference between staying home for hot chocolate and playing in the snow and waiting for the bus to SCHOOL in icky weather, hinges on catching your school's name in a long alphabetical list, you learn -- quickly.
• Ortonville, MN is EVIL. I hated them. They were the next school in the list -- they were the ones whose name was read instead of ours. They were the ones who got to go back to bed, smug and warm... and, when my old boyfriend's dysfunctional grandparents ended up living in Ortonville, it should have been a sign.

Today, the high will be -1 with a windchill of -28. Tomorrow night it is supposed to be -15, actual temprature. Not cold enough to cancel things, but just cold enough to be inconvenient.