Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Wussification of Canadians

Yesterday was an EXTREME WEATHER DAY in the Greater Toronto Area.

School buses were cancelled, but most schools were open. I was driving on the roads and the roads would have actually been alright if the snow trucks and salters had actually been on the roads before the morning rush hour. I saw one truck at the most on my drive to the subway.

Now, perhaps I am getting old and cranky but is it my imagination or do people not know that it snows in Canada in the winter?

Hello everyone in Canada, especially in the P&ssified Greater Toronto Area.

Are you listening?

Here is a memo from me to you about winter.

We have snow in the winter! 

And when it snows, if you are driving, you have to slow down.

You should have winter tires on your car.

Four wheel drive is a good thing!

I don't understand what the panic is about EXTREME WEATHER here in Toronto.

This is a city that is clearly full of way too many wimps. And these wimps are in positions of semi-power where they have the power to control the economy by declaring EXTREME WEATHER alerts, cancelling school buses and basically discouraging children from attending school even if the schools are open and thereby making it difficult for parents to get to work and you know-work, so that our taxes can be used to pay their salaries among other things.

I was trying to think if we had any EXTREME WEATHER when I was a child, in grade school and throughout high school. I only can remember one instance in particular when school was closed and that was because there was an actual veritable white out blizzard with gusting winds, blowing drifts and the snow was accumulating to heights of about a metre or thereabouts. There was also a massive ice storm some time in the late 1990s that shut things down for a while, but I think Montreal was more affected than Toronto.

But other than that one time that I can remember-and the big ice storm, we went to school every day and parents were expected to be at work. Teachers were also expected to be at work. Everyone doubled their travel time, or tripled it if necessary. We might not have walked home for lunch on those EXTREME WEATHER days but we were definitely at school. Those were the days when kids-like me and my siblings-could walk to and from school alone.

In fact, we also were shoved out the door for morning recess, lunch time play time and afternoon recess. There was no way in hell that you could stay inside during recess or lunch. The teachers actually stood by the doors and insisted that we play outside. Insisted is a nice way of putting it. You had a better chance-a waayy, waaaaaay better chance of hell freezing over than being allowed to stay indoors at recess.

Even if it was freezing, below freezing or if there was EXTREMELY EXTREME WEATHER we were expected to go outside and burn off some steam. That was when kids played outside more instead of staring aimlessly at little screens for hundreds of hours a week like little pint-sized zombies, unlike now when their helicopter parents (driving massive SUV's for the very demanding mountain roads of the GTA) demand that they wear helmets at recess, forbid peanut butter sandwiches and take them to their psychiatrists after school and then arrange "play dates" (WTF is with that phrase anyway, can't kids just 'play').

In the junior high years, the teachers were not even sympathetic to the girls who feigned feminine problems relating to that time of the month to get out of going outside.

"Cramps!! I can't go outside I have cramps," they would screech hopelessly as they were shoved out the door into the EXTREME WEATHER.

So, I have no patience for the EXTREME WIMPS and LOSERS who cannot deal with 3 centimetres of snow or a little bit of freezing rain. Give me a break.

Everyone needs to be at work or school regardless of the weather.

Kids should be shoved outside to play, bundled up in snowsuits, etc.

People need to toughen up, just ever so slightly.

This is Canada, and it's precipitation forchrisssssake and not thermonuclear war.

This has been your EXTREME WEATHER ALERT UPDATE FROM SUBURBAN JEWISH MOTHER HQ COMMAND CENTRAL. 

You're welcome!