A Brush with Greatness, and the Weather Report

Our school took a contingent to the Lunar New Year parade last week. All the kids had matching t-shirts, and rode a bus to Flushing for the festivities.  There were banners and good spirits everywhere. There were even a few turned-around kids. One's father offered him a one-way trip back to his country if he didn't shape up in school. Another, upon getting a negative phone call from a teacher, watched as his dad smashed his beloved computer to bits.

But oddly, both these kids survived the trauma and managed to excel in school afterward. Though they fought over who would hold the banner, and argued over which photos merited much-coveted placement in Facebook and QQ, a sort of Chinese Facebook, they mostly had no issues.

Mayor de Blasio was there, and our kids got a rare opportunity to ask him questions. He's pretty tall, and kind of stands out in the crowd. So what did our top student ask the mayor?

"Is school gonna be open on Monday?

"Yes," said the mayor, without hesitation. The kid was very disappointed. Then he had a thought...

"What about Thursday? They said we would have a big storm on Wednesday night."

"Well, I'll have to watch the weather reports very carefully this week," said the mayor.

And that, ladies and gentleman, was the highlight of that kid's month for sure. I think we're all gonna have to follow the mayor's advice and watch the weather reports.

I'm not all that keen on spending endless hours on the LIE. This is the sort of thing that seems worth staying home for, whatever the mayor decides.