The snow fell. And fell and fell and fell. Feet of it. I live in the South. This amount of snow is not supposed to fall here. Our local municipalities are doing their very best to manage the snow and snow removal crews have been working for days on end. School has been out for over a week.

The main roads are now clear and have been for a few days, but the neighborhoods are still a mess. The road crews have been focusing on clearing school bus routes. There is simply nowhere to put all the snow that they are scooping up. Giant dump trucks line up behind frontloaders and haul it away. I have no idea where it goes but somewhere out there is a mountain of grey slush with more coming all the time.

We are simply not equipped to handle this amount of snow. I was driving home last night after dark on a Sunday evening and saw a Bobcat clearing a street in my neighborhood, one of the streets that school busses come down.
To all of my brethren in Northern Virginia: please remember how very bad it is on your street today when, in late June, you realize that our kids will still be in school on the first of July (Heck, maybe the 4th of July!).

Our regularly scheduled programming will continue soon, but keep in mind that we will all have to be flexible in order to get our kids through the rest of the school year with the requisite number of hours. Dance classes might have to be rescheduled. Sports practices might have to be moved around. The downstream effects of this snow will be far-reaching and pervasive.

Every one of us is going to be inconvenienced and none of us is special. We, all of us, will need to be patient and as flexible as possible for months to come. So close your eyes, take a deep breath and visualize a peaceful place. For me that place is sandy, and warm – next to a warm ocean. You will need to go there often in the coming months.

I was reading Wired Magazine this afternoon and ran across an article titled “100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About.” It was yet another list documenting the inexorable march of technology making our lives easier… well, “easier.”

Many of the items on the list are already dinosaurs, distant memories that evoke another time such as “Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday,” (gone by the mid-80s) or “Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.” Others were blips on the radar, stepping-stones on the technological path leading to all things digital, such as “Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.”

The theme I see running through the list is patience. Many of the items listed were invented solely to get you what you want faster. Which leads me to the crux of the biscuit. I feel as though with each new advance in technology, instant gratification becomes more ubiquitous. On one hand, it’s good to get it and get it now. On the other hand, I am beset by brats of all ages who don’t know how to wait, and being an adult means waiting. Hurry up and wait. It is the unspoken mantra of the business world.

Oh, sure – you’re told about efficiency and synergy and maximizing resources. All well and good, but you still have to wait. Finish that up and submit it to the powers that be, then wait for a response.

My children don’t know a world without internet, can’t remember VHS tapes and having to rewind them, have never been to a Blockbuster store, have access to instant 24 hour on-demand programming on TV, play with their friends across the neighborhood on the Xbox, and so on.

And when Mom and Dad come home, the kids are often in “I want it now” mode. That usually comes to a screeching halt on our arrival. We, all together, chat over dinner at the dinner table on most nights. We talk about our day. We read books. We putter around the shop and fix stuff that perhaps should be thrown out just to see what it looks like when we take it apart.

Sure, we play Halo and we watch movies and surf the Internet together, but as parents, we are working on keeping all that in perspective. It’s my belief that above and beyond technology time, a kid needs decompression time. They should have enforced “No Screen” time so that they’re forced to contemplate the water stain on the ceiling for ten minutes.

Take a look at the list. Tell me what you see.

Hey Gang:

I have a bunch of stuff to post over the next few days but having problems getting the spare time to put it up. More brilliant prose is on its way. Soon. I promise. Like this afternoon. Really, I’m here for you.