By Holly Dayton, ’13, Contributor
With ten garbage bags of fake snow, white paint, and duct tape behind me, I was ready to make my move. This was going to be good. It was Sunday, 10:21:31 Post Meridian Eastern Standard Time (I’d synchronized my watch with the Pentagon), almost show time. You see, after almost two months and no hope of a snow day, I had decided to take action. I looked up headmaster Dr. Rob Macrae’s address, talked to his daughters and made my plans. This was the timeline for a secret project I was calling “Operation: SSD” for “Spring Snow Day”:
12:00:00 PM Sunday- Wait until Dr. Macrae leaves his house for his afternoon jog, then enter through the back door (no, it’s not breaking the law, Celia Macrae let me in). Put a premade DVD in the DVD machine and replace the radio with a tape recorder set with premade tape.
10:30:00 PM Sunday- Since it’s now gotten dark, I check for the all clear flashing candle in the window (made by Celia, my inside woman) then go to work. The first order of business is to cover the ground closest to the back door, the front door, and the garage door in fake snow. Next, I duct tape both the front and back doors, and paint the white paint onto the windows.
*At this point, I went off the schedule a little and simply gazed dumbfounded at my own genius. I was about to achieve the dream of every schoolchild since the age of seven.
12:00:00 AM Monday- Though dressed entirely in black, I go over to a friend’s house to “ask a science question” and provide myself with an alibi. When she asks why I’m there at midnight and why I have a smear of white paint on my t-shirt, I reply that I was “just in the neighborhood doing community service.” It’s a good thing my friend doesn’t ask too many questions.
6:00:00 AM Monday- I’m back at the Macrae’s house (like I would miss the execution of my plot?). Dr. Macrae wakes up, and from outside I hear a startled yell. That’s because I’ve asked Celia to turn the thermostat down to 55 (got to make these things realistic!).
6:15:00 AM Monday- Since I’m right next to the house, I hear when Dr. Macrae turns on the television, saying at the same time “There’s absolutely no way…” The next thing he hears is my premade DVD of a blizzard. The reporter’s loud drawl about the snow that’s barricading everyone in is the only thing I can hear. Dr. Macrae is obviously dumbfounded. He won’t believe my plot now, but I’ve planned for that. He turns on the radio (or what he thinks is his radio) and hears the forecast of seven feet of snow.
6:30:00 AM Monday- Dr. Macrae looks out his white “frosty” windows, sees the little glimpses of “snow,” and has to accept that the impossible has happened, and I hear him calling into the school machine. He’s silent for a bit and then starts in on his speech: “Dear Students. Due to a bizarre meteorological event, school will be cancelled today—” Any other part of what he said is drowned out in my ecstatic squeal. Whoops.
So, the moral of this story is that when planning a fake winter catastrophe, and when succeeding, don’t scream. That would have been good.
Photo courtesy of http://www.heatingoil.com/blog/weekly-weather-report-february-15-more-snow-on-the-way-but-not-too-much215/
