Learning that life
is a real snow job

It’s late Tuesday night. Nary a snowfall has fallen — not even in the far-off reaches of Goodland, which we seem to care about only because Wichita’s TV market reaches that far west.

Yet in on email, on our screen, and in our apps, the depth of the list of places already deciding to close in advance for Snowmageddon the Sequel probably exceeds the depth of fluffy white stuff predicted to fall Wednesday.

Are we so convinced, despite occasionally being buried under a few inches of “partly cloudy,” that weather forecasters finally have perfected their art?

Are we so concerned for personal safety that we lock ourselves in our homes when more than a handful of flakes appear likely to come?

Are we so hopelessly bored by work, school, or whatever that we’re looking, like a person set up on a blind date, for any excuse to cancel?

Or have we somehow managed to simply wimp out?

Those of us born back in the Jurassic Age love to regale anyone younger than retirement age with tales of trudging two miles through snow, uphill both coming and going, to get to school.

Nowadays, school parking lots are fuller than some discount stores’ lots on Black Friday, and classes have to be dismissed if a perfect indoor temperature has to be maintained.

Those who actually were around when “Star Trek” first aired on network TV recall that Marion Elementary school had floor-to-ceiling windows enclosing halls that ran around the entire exterior of the building. No one knew it at the time, but the design would have been perfect for building a solar oven.

Yet those of us watching Mr. Spock deliver his “it isn’t logical” line for the very first time attended classes with no air conditioning and only a lone roof window in each classroom to provide ventilation.

Were we tougher, more dedicated to school, or just mindless automatons ignorant to the notion that things didn’t have to be that way?

Times change. Around that time, school officials decided to make the elementary school extra safe in case of fire, so most walls were coated in — you guessed it — asbestos.

The city tried to keep down disease by running sprayers through town all summer. Their cooling mist was enjoyed by kids tagging along, running through it. The chemical involved? DDT.

Much as we like to think we have all the answers, time always gives us other ones. Wednesday will tell whether decisions to declare a disaster, close most public offices, and cancel classes was good or bad. We’ll learn the same in years to come about how we deal with other issues of today.

Never should we be stuck in the past, but the past does offer meaningful lessons for the present and future. Among them are that no idea, however well-conceived it may seem at the time, is 100% right.

— ERIC MEYER