What About This…? 1.19.2017

By Wayne William Cipriano

Perhaps the finest local television commercial ever made around here was broadcast three or four winters ago.

It is a plug for a local station’s weather department reminding viewers of their school-closing advisory feature run during snowy weekly mornings. If you saw the spot even once, you’ll remember it.

It was produced as if we viewers were in the television looking out at the audience which is four young children in pajamas sitting on a couch anxiously watching what we know  to be that station’s closed-school advisories.

Breaths are bated, staring eyes widely opened, the incessant motion of young kids frozen as they watch school district after school district slide by on the crawl line announc-ing.

And, then it appears!  Their school is closed! They explode with glee as one unforgettable young tyke drops to his knees before the screen, doubled fists pump into the air, and with closed eyes and a look of exquisite joy on his face, mouths the word, “Yes!”

Certainly my favorite local com-mercial of all time, no doubt because forced school closings for snow (or any other reason) played such an important role during my scholastic years.  So much so that even to this day, any decades beyond any formal education, I still experience that ecstatic rush when school is cancelled and did so even when our kids were in school (but secretly).

I am leaving this article here, basking in what warm pleasure-ocean of memory, because I cannot bring myself to address the reason these thoughts and feelings came to me today.

Maybe I will talk about it at the next school–cancelling snowfall.  After all, how long will I have to wait for that to happen?