Hayter for January 25, 2026
“Let it snow. Please, let it snow!”
Most of us will agree that Christmas is or “tis” the season to be jolly. Unfortunately, immediately after Christmas, the season stinks on ice, at which point most students and sane teachers find themselves in the realm of the depressed. It’s a dark place, the realm.
We’re now living in the first day of the last week in January. At least you are. I’m not there yet. I won’t be until I wake up Sunday morning. However, since it may snow on Sunday, there is a good chance that I won’t be in the house. I’ll step outside to throw snowballs with Jay and Emma. They’re our two elderly neighbors… at least they will be in another 60 years.
Jay is in the second grade and Emma is in Pre-K. There was no such thing as Pre-K when I was in school. We didn’t even have kindergarten. Life was good, back then. Not so much for the parents, though. Mothers couldn’t send their kid to school until they reached the age of six. (The kids, not the mothers.)
Considering all of the accelerated classes he will be attending, I’m fairly sure that Jay will graduate from high school at the age of 14. I would think he would be fascinated with math and science, yet the kid is crazy about dinosaurs. The bigger the dinosaur the crazier he gets. For Christmas he got a giant Dromaeosaurus Rex. That particular breed of dinosaur didn’t show up until Jurassic Park 14. I don’t know where the dinosaurs hid themselves before that.
I learned the hard way that Jay was also good at breaking into safes. I’ve got a small metal safe with that holds a bunch of pennies and dimes. I keep the key to the safe inside the safe, because I trust Kay, not to steal our money. A year or two ago, Jay spotted my safe, and managed to lock it without using the key. I didn’t know that was possible. The next time he visited, I asked him to unlock my safe. He grabbed it, turned around, quickly turned back around and handed the opened safe to me. Since then, I’ve refused to let the boy in my study.
Emma is an absolute doll! She’s the only child I know who enjoys being around me. If Kay stays outside for a while, it’s because she’s doing stuff with the neighbors or their kids. I’m generally in my study writing on my book or an article. More often than not, Kay comes in the house and says, darling, Emma wants to see you. Immediately that little munchkin comes running right at me. Emma, not Kay.
By the way, the Jay and Emma’s grandmother found a used battery powered child’s car, and gave it to them. Jay got to drive it a couple of days before Emma took charge of it. We live on a cul-de-sac so it’s a relatively safe place to drive.
The car makes a whale of a noise. Dennis and I never had any kid’s vehicle nearly as good as that one. However, when we lived on Pinewood Lane in Pasadena, we each got a bicycle. We still rode those things when we were in the early days of high school. By the time Dennis and I went away to college, Dad was wise enough to pass the bicycles along to someone else’s kids.
I wrote an article about the Christmas when Dennis and I got those bikes. I was in the third grade and Dennis was in the fifth. The bicycles were J.C. Higgins complete with baskets and chain guards. I don’t see many bicycles nowadays that have fenders. Without fenders, after a rainstorm you’ll end up with mud all over your back. Kids today aren’t all that concerned about the back of their shirts.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with the possibility of snow on Sunday. If we do get even the semblance of snow, Jay, Emma, and Mark will have a blast outside. The kids have never seen snow yet, so I’ll probably have to explain it to them. Kay will probably join us, because she wanted to break up the only snowball fight I was ever in. Not big on snowball fights, that girl.
Kay will make sure that the neighborhood kids and me won’t be throwing snowballs. Jay will be building snow dinosaurs. Emma will make a path in the snow with her battery powered vehicle. Of course, all of this is dependent on snow.
I’m thinking that at the time of this reading, it will be a 30 percent chance of mild snow. I will be pleasantly surprised if we get any at all. The time we got a good snow in Pasadena, Mom poured chocolate milk over cups of snow. It seemed so special at the time. It doesn’t take much for a south Texas kid to get excited about the chance of snow. Especially me.
End
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