As the season changes and gray skies wrap us in winter’s embrace, I’m nostalgic for the snowy winters of my youth. I grew up in the Denver, Colorado area, where snowbound winters were an annual feature rather than the rarity they are here in Central Texas. FYI, Austin’s forecast is 75 degrees today. Not exactly sweater weather….but I digress.

Those Denver winters were a glorious thing to me. I can say glorious now because as a kid I didn’t have to chip ice off the car windshield, shovel snow off the driveway, or brave the slippery streets to get to work. No, for me, bad weather days or snow days meant one thing: I didn’t have to go to school. And for this dyslexic guy, the only thing better than not having to go to school was getting to spend the day out in the snow.

Snow days meant building snow forts, snowball fights with my siblings and neighbors, and my favorite…sledding! Some of the neighborhood kids had actual sleds but the majority of us had to improvise. We used everything from plastic trash bags to flattened cardboard boxes. Sometimes the boys with sleds found that using a trash bag or flattened cardboard box worked even better. The hill behind our house got a real workout on snow days. Those are some great memories.

To all of my blog readers: I’d love to hear your memories of snow days…
Here’s a reprint of something I wrote years ago as a remembrance of those special days:

Snow Days
This morning I heard the announcement —
school’s closed ‘cuz it snowed in the night!
I got up without needing prodding,
and was ready to go at first light.

With a scarf and a hat and wool mittens,
galoshes and four pairs of socks,
who wants to be stuck inside sittin’?
I’m goin’ out with the kids on the block!

We built castles and snow forts and igloos,
we hurled snowballs and sledded all day,
with school canceled because of the weather,
we had hours and hours for play.

When I think of those snow days, it’s funny,
we played all day outside as a rule,
but when it was time for our learning,
such days were too cold to hold school.

Don’t miss my next special blog: “Dyslexiaville: Helping Kids with Dyslexia and Attention Issues,” An Iterview with Academy Award-Winning Film Director/Producer Peggy Stern.