Up hill both ways

Well, here in the Midwest the latest killer storm to pummel the countryside landed last night covering the ground with winter's blanket.

Then it happened; the city shut down. With no more than three inches anywhere all the schools closed, the bottom of the television was festooned with a litany of closures, one after another after another. Well, what's so bad about that you ask? We have become a society that cowers at the slightest sight or sound of bad weather. Yeah, I might be a crotchety old geezer but even now in the world of global warming where we haven't had a foot of snow in two years more things close down now than ever before.

I understand wanting the children to be safe, and there are more autos and trucks on the road than ever before, but really. Schools and nearly everything else close down if two snowflakes have a conversation. Schools in a single year have cancelled classes more times than the four years I was in high school. It happened once if anyone is counting.

I have been a retail manager for thirty years and in all that time the stores I have worked in have closed exactly twice due to weather. Here's the issue, once everything is closed and the public is told to stay off the roads they do the exact opposite; they go to stores, banks and everywhere else. Gee, it's too difficult to go to work in bad weather but I can still run to the store to get some beer, or cigs or just about anything else.

Have we changed so much in this society that we can't have a normal day with two inches of snow on the ground? That's a sad situation I find us in. Sad indeed.