Michigan Winter

For me, elementary school days in Michigan were the best. Having been born a Yankee (Massachusetts, to be precise - which makes me wicked cool even though I remember next to nothing about living there), cold winters were all I knew. Snow was a given. We all went outside looking like buoys with all of our puffy layers (and a little like Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story). Inevitably, we'd face that circulation restricting scenario when the turtleneck layer sleeves somehow got pushed up around our elbows while the bottom of the shirt rode up, exposing our bellybuttons under our sweaters. And we wore moon boots. Oh moon boots! You probably remember the removable soft white booty liner that could double as a cast if you were playing doctor's office. And if you're like me, you might remember that other secret special Michigander liner inside the booty liner - the bread bag your mom cinched over your socks with rubber bands before you stepped into your space shoes. (FYI - John Heffron, from Last Comic Standing has an excellent bit about Michigan elementary school coat rooms, which mentions the ever present bread bag.) It was cold, but we had style.

If you rode the bus to school, there was a cardboard box near the driver that contained various "lost and found" mittens and gloves, most of them mateless. The bus driver often dipped into this box for a mitten to cover the cold metal passenger door handle when temperatures became almost unbearable. The little hand waved at us on the ride to school, like something out of Laverne and Shirley. While I was a frequent contributor to the lost and found box, I was always thankful my winter accessories never made center stage. (I have a fear of confrontation, and the bus driver was usually a little bit scary.)

When the holiday season approached, there was another special thing we did at my elementary school in Brighton, Michigan: off-site visits to parents' houses to make Christmas cookies. How awesome is that? It was especially awesome if your mom was one of the volunteer moms and a select group of kids got to go to YOUR house to create these masterpieces. I'm not talking about kids that were already my friends, but the other kids. The ones you just see at school. When we gave them the tour of the digs, I felt special - I felt famous. We were doing a school-sponsored activity at MY HOUSE. My house!

I think I'm still glowing thinking about it. Some things never change ...