blogs

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I grew up in Maine. The average high temperature in my hometown is 50F or below six months out of the year; the average low is under 40F for seven months of the year. I guess that’s why they say Maine has two seasons, winter and the Fourth of July, and why I don’t have a lot of sympathy when my kids say they’re “freezing.” Taking a page from my dad’s playbook, I’ll say, “You don’t know what freezing is! Back in my day, I walked to school in snow that was up to my hips!” (My father claimed to snowshoe to school, “uphill both ways,” of course.)

That said, I still make sure my children dress appropriately for cooler weather. When the thermostat says 41F, as it did this morning, coats are not optional. I can’t *make them* wear their coats once out of my sight, of course, any more than my mother could make me wear a hat even though my hair would freeze on the way to school. But to not even make the effort seems like neglect to me. I assumed that other parents would feel similarly, but I watched a child get dropped off at my kids’ school this morning, emerging from his family’s SUV to walk through the gate empty-handed, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Maybe there are issues I am not aware of, but I grew up on food stamps and government cheese and always had a jacket. Call me a humbug, but nothing says “I don’t give a ****” like a middle-class parent sending her child to school without a coat.