For Adults, Snow Days Feel Like Divine Permission to Rest

One time in college, I had to stay up all night to write a paper. It happened to be the same night that a blizzard covered New York City in more than two feet of snow, at the time the largest snowfall in the city since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. The snow had been predicted by late afternoon the previous day. I remember the festively dystopian feeling of the grocery store, where people were making a desperate run on bread, milk, and snacks, as though every grocery store in New York wasn’t absolutely going to stay open no matter how much it snowed. Back home, I sat down at my desk in front of a window that looked out over the street. It got to be a little after midnight, and the snow still hadn’t started. , I thought. Maybe no snow was coming, and we’d all made fools of ourselves getting worked up over the idea of a snow day, hoping for