The big news here in the DC area, and along much of the Eastern Seaboard, is the winter storm forecasted to strike very early tomorrow morning and wreak havoc on all of us who call the region home. It's really hard to get an accurate assessment of the situation. In large part that's because it hasn't happened yet, and nobody knows with certainty what's going to happen, until it actually happens. In large part, it's because the short-term incentives of pretty much everybody involved are to act as if we are on the verge of a snowy apocalypse. The weather services don't want to be accused of insufficiently alerting the public to the possibility, or understating the potential damage, of a major storm; the media knows sensationalizing the weather is a great way to get cheap clicks; and for the general public, it's something exciting to talk about and something you feel compelled to prepare for. You don't want to be the family who's eating creamed eels and wadded beef because you didn't get to the grocery store in time.*
*I went to our local supermarket yesterday, and parts of it looked like photos of Soviet-era groceries, just huge swaths of empty shelving. But, here's the thing, there was still a ton of food for sale. Like, maybe you couldn't get exactly what you wanted--they were all out of strawberries and grapes and only had the super expensive artisanal yogurt left--but if you needed sustenance, it was available for purchase. Capitalism, baby!
But there is probably a long-term downside to treating every kinds rough weather event as if it's a biblical torrent. Collectively, we become a boy-who-cried-wolf society, where we are ill-prepared for the true disasters. So, that's why I'm going to make a very boring prediction: This storm is going to be no big deal. We are going to get half a foot* of snow tomorrow morning/afternoon, and it will be over by the evening. Things will be closed on Monday (DCPS already has a pre-planned staff day, so kids have it off anyway), but the snow plows will get out, the roads will be cleared, and the city will be moving again by Tuesday. Schools might not reopen, because they are annoyingly cautious about, well, pretty much everything, but they will be Wednesday, and then that'll be that. There are not going to be widespread power outages; old people won't be freezing in their homes; and diabetics won't be deprived of insulin because medical supply trucks can't get into the city. It's just going to be a couple of normal snow days, where parents bundle their kids in whatever snow-appropriate attire they can rummage up (always with mismatched gloves), and everybody goes outside and plays and sleds and frolics for 45 minutes, before returning inside to get warm and drink hot chocolate. The worst part is going to be looking at the banks of dirty snow on the side of the road for the next few weeks. That's my prediction.
*The Weather Channel, which is advertising an "Historic Winter Storm," is saying 5" to 8" of snow anticipated. I assure that is not historic. I was in DC in winter of 2003-2004, when we got, like, two feet of snow, and the city almost completely shut down for over a week. I actually did run out of food and had to trudge several miles to the closest open corner store for some hugely marked up canned goods. Now to be fair, the storm is supposed to be worse in surround areas than in DC proper. But, to be fair in the other direction, there's nothing stopping media from noting this in their coverage.
Of course, I could be wrong about all of this--maybe the storm really will wreak destruction and mayhem--but that's true about everything everybody says. It could always be wrong. That's baked into the cake of all human analysis.
In other news, a weird thing happened the other day, where Lil' S2 and a bunch of his friends walked to Target after school, as they sometimes do, and some random guy told them to "stay safe" and paid for all their snacks for them. Details are very murky because they are being retold by nine- and ten-year-olds--the description of the man is that he had kinda blond curly hair and was maybe Black, maybe white, and maybe mixed--but here's my best guess as to what happened. While walking to Target, Lil' S2 got too close to the road, and some guy honked at him from his car. He happened to be going to Target also, and when he saw the same kids he just honked at in line, he paid for all their snacks on a whim and told them to stay safe -- kinda a life-lesson, imparted wisdom, gesture-y type of thing. If that's the case, it's a little strange, but completely harmless. In fact, I'm a thousand times more frightened by the fact that Lil' S2 was close to the street than I am by some rando paying for their snacks -- and I let him know as much. One thing I am not chill about at all is pedestrian safety with respect to my children. Every time I drive down the major street that bounds our neighborhood, and I see how fast people drive and how distracted they are and how distracted walkers often are,* it sends a shiver up my spine.
*There is one crosswalk in particular that is kinda at a weird angle whereby the pedestrian has to really look backwards over their left shoulder to see if a car is turning right into their area, and they almost never do. In theory, they shouldn't have to--it's their right-of-way--but that's putting way more faith in other people's driving abilities than I have or that I want my loved ones to have.
As soon as a parent got wind of this incident (one of the moms asked how her son still had money after getting snacks), it spread on the text chains like Crying Jordan. I found that I was somewhat in the minority, in that most parents were super creeped out by the fact that an adult thought it was appropriate to buy things for children he didn't know, regardless of his intention. To be clear, I was a little creeped, but not super creeped out. It went so far as to consider asking the store to view their security footage, but I don't think anybody actually did that. Instead, it was determined that all of our children would be indefinitely forbidden from going to Target after school, which I think is the correct decision.
To be honest, I was never really comfortable with them going to Target. It's right on the border of a part of the city where things get a little shady -- not like City of God shady, but inappropriate for unsupervised fifth graders shady. But they always went in the middle of the day and in a large group and other parents seemed okay with it, so S and I reluctantly agreed to it. Well, now I realize that all the parents thought like me. They were also just going along with it because everybody else was going along with it. So, now it's done, and who knows, maybe this small incident forestalled a much more serious incident that would have occurred if we continued to let them go to Target.
It's a tricky thing, determining how much freedom to give your kids, especially in a big city. I feel pretty safe in our little nook, but there are definitely pockets of DC for which this is not the case, and you can't live your life and avoid all the bad stuff 100% of the time. Part of growing up is learning how to be aware of your surroundings and how to successfully navigate out of potentially dangerous situations. The challenge is that, as a parent, it's not at all obvious how to let your children learn these lessons in an age-appropriate manner. It's a balance, and I think we added a bit too much weight to the "free-range" side of the scale, and now we have to self-correct. If nothing else, it gives me greater piece of mind that they can't go to Target any longer, and that's not something to discount. An anxious worrying parent isn't good for anybody.
Alright, time to go get ready for a birthday party -- our second one in as many weeks. Look at us, social butterflies.
Until next time...
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