Winter Weather

I hate winter. I don't hate everything about winter, but I feel like there are enough things that I deeply dislike, that it's only a mild overstatement to say that I hate it. One thing I truly do loathe is driving in snow. I guess I don't quite understand why people think it's normal to not mind participating in an already risky enough undertaking: driving (unfortunately I'll get more into that later) and throw in reduced visibility on top of a dramatically decreased coefficient of friction. It's just stressful and I avoid it whenever possible. I'd probably consider missing my own wedding if getting there meant I had to drive in snow.

Anyway, because of this completely rational fear, I check the weather. A lot. My phone, google, weather.com and ksl.com are checked on a regular basis from about October to April. Every once in a while I'll check somewhere else too. On Tuesday night this week, I was going through the daily weather perusal on ksl.com. I am not quite obsessed enough to have the weather page on that site bookmarked or anything, so I went through the homepage and was immediately distracted by the headline about a 2-year old child that was hit in her driveway in Sandy. I live in Sandy. I teach in Sandy. This was a heartbreaking enough story, but I just had the feeling that it was more than the headline was telling me. I read through the article and the approximate coordinates of the accident were given. They were in my school boundaries. That feeling didn't go away.

At school earlier that day I had addressed 5 envelopes to send letters to parents of some of my students. I have a kinda random memory. One of my little sister's friends from high school who I've maybe seen 3 times in my life was born on April 8. The phone number of one of my friends who I used to play Barbies with growing up and I haven't called in probably like 12 years is/was 292-8924. Don't be offended if I don't know your name after I've talked to you like 7 times though. I think my brain likes numbers. The address of the tragedy on the website was approximate, but it was approximately exactly where I had addressed one of the letters to. This little mom had accidentally hit and killed her 2-year old daughter. She just didn't know the baby was outside. SO SAD! No names were given, but it just seemed like that was my student's family.

I went to school on Wednesday, still thinking about that and wondering what I'd find out. Before school started, one of the other teachers came into my room with red, puffy eyes and I knew I had guessed correctly. I went and talked to the principal per her request and that was the start to quite a day. Things like that really put things in perspective. Some things matter. I think some other things matter, but they don't really. On Tuesday, the day of the accident, we had been talking about the Mormon pioneers who moved to Utah in Social Studies in my class. This student volunteered information that made it clear that he is LDS. I am so glad that this family has the gospel. I hope and pray this little family is okay. I cried last September (maybe October) one time. Wednesday, while telling my class about what had happened, I teared up again. People matter.