Dennis Sparks/Contributor

I get Snow Days!

This means that any time there's a chance of snow on a "school night," I turn into an 8-year-old. I monitor every available weather forecast. I scan the western skies. I subscribe to a 24-hour online school closing advisory service. And then, of course, I do my "Snow Dance."

For those of you who live in Hawaii, on Mars, or anywhere else Snow Days never happen, the Snow Dance is a highly personal ritual that can take many forms. My own version of the Snow Dance is performed as follows:

1. Put your pajamas on inside-out and backward.

2. Tape a nickel to a west-facing window, with Thomas Jefferson looking toward Chelsea (watching for the storm). There are those who believe that the nickel must be from the 1960s or earlier, because of the relative purity of the metal.

This is silly superstitious nonsense - any nickel taped to a west-facing window will make it snow.

3. Tear up some notebook paper into small "snowflakes." Mead 3-hole punched with light blue medium-width lines works the best.

4. Hop around on your left foot, through every room in the house, throwing your paper snowflakes in the air and singing "Snow come and shut down all the schools" to the tune of the Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It In The Road."

5. Explain all this to your wife. At this point you may want to consult with an attorney, a mental health professional, or both.

And when you finally get your snow day, here's how it goes:

6:45 AM: The guy on the radio reads off the list of school closings, and halleluiah - you're on the list! You roll over and go back to sleep.

10:45 AM: You wake up with a start, thinking that you're late for work. Then you relax as you remember that you have a whole day to accomplish all the personal things you're usually way too busy to get around to.

11:45 AM: You wake up with a start...

12:00 Noon : You go downstairs, have a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. Then you sit back with a notebook and a pen to plan a full day of doing all the personal things you're usually way too busy to get around to. You flip the television on, just to check out the news and the weather update.

1:30 PM: You decide to get going on that list of personal things you're usually way too busy to get around to, right after you watch the last episode in that "Flipper" marathon on the Family Channel.

3:15 PM: You wake up with a start...

3:28 PM: You make your mind up to dive right into that list of personal things you're usually way too busy to get around to, right after maybe ten or fifteen minutes of Guitar Hero, since you never seem to get a chance to crank the old PS2 up any more, and besides, you saw an article somewhere that said that video games can help build hand-eye coordination, and it seems like some of that would come in pretty handy...

6:45 PM: Your wife comes home from work to find you with a little plastic guitar in your hands head-banging your way through "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by AC/DC, and declines your invitation to a Guitar Hero Death Match. You shut down the old PS2 and start planning dinner.

Ok, that's pretty much it; I should wrap this up and go now. I just found a 1948 nickel in my pocket change, and I have to go dig up some tape.

Copyright © 2008, Michael Ball

Mike Ball is the Erma Bombeck Award-winning author of "What I've Learned So Far..." and the book What I've Learned So Far... Part I: Bikes, Docks & Slush Nuggets.