It’s the second day of high school class after Christmas break. My son is in detention, and I am in the vice principal’s office to discuss it.

Me: “Why does my son have to serve detention?”

Vice Principal: “He has an unexcused absence.”

Me: “And when was that?”

Vice Principal: “He missed the first day back from break.”

Me: “He was at Denver’s Stapleton Airport. It was shut down because of heavy snow. His flight the day before was canceled. He didn’t get a flight out until yesterday afternoon, too late to come to class.”

Vice Principal: “That makes it an unexcused absence.”

Me: “It was not his fault.”

Vice Principal: “You should have called to say the flight was canceled.”

Me: “Was anyone in the building that day?”

Vice Principal: “No.”

Me: “Then who was I going to call?”

Vice Principal: “No matter; the detention still stands.”

Me: “My son has asthma. If he missed a day because he was sick, would he have detention if I couldn’t call in advance?”

Vice Principal: “No. That’s excused.”

Me: “Well, if that happens again in Denver, he will be sick that day.”

I hate to lie, but both my son and I knew this was not fair to him.

The Norway Cup is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, with tens of thousands of players and literally thousands of football matches (that’s “soccer” for our American readers) over the course of a week. I was a referee there several years in a row during the 2000s, and there are many stories I could tell; this one is one of them.

This time, though, the story is about the time Mother Nature threw a spanner in the works. A few days into the tournament, it started raining. A lot. The tournament was held on a huge open grass field, and as the rain kept coming, water started building up on some of the pitches. Playing football in the rain isn’t a problem in itself, but when there’s standing water out there, it gets a bit difficult. You’re not allowed to pick up the ball and run with it like you do in American football, so it usually rolls around on the grass when the players dribble or pass it. That’s hard to do when there are several inches of standing water on the pitch.

I was refereeing a match for some twelve-year-olds when it started to become clear that the pitch was getting unusable. The ball wouldn’t roll on the grass, stopping in the puddles that kept growing in size and depth. Eventually, most of the pitch was covered in standing water.

We tried our best to continue, but at the half-time break, I called the coaches over.

Me: “I don’t think we can continue this, do you?”

Coach #1: “No, the goals are flooded. The ball stops before the goal line every time you take a shot!”

Coach #2: “Yeah, this isn’t football anymore; it’s water polo!”

We had a laugh about the absurd situation, and I notified them that I was officially halting the match and that I would inform the organizers. As I packed up my stuff to leave, I could see the kids playing in the puddles, jumping and sliding in the water, which at this point was literally going up to our ankles.

In the organizers’ office, though, they were less sympathetic.

Organizer: “You stopped a match?”

Me: “Yes, on pitch twenty-four. There’s water—”

Organizer: “You’re not supposed to stop matches because of rain.”

Me: “Actually, I am. When the pitch is unusable, the referee is the one who decides whether the match can continue.”

Organizer: “You’re not supposed to do that. Not playing a match creates holes in the schedule. This creates a lot of problems for us.”

Me: “I don’t know what to tell you. There’s standing water all over the pitch. It isn’t possible to play football there at the moment. The players are currently swimming in it.”

The man seemed frustrated, but he didn’t offer any solution, instead just going around in circles and mumbling that I shouldn’t have stopped the game from being played. As this kind of thing is the organizers’ task to deal with rather than mine, I left him to handle it and went back to the building where we stayed during the tournament.

Not half an hour later, messages started popping up on our phones as well as being posted on the official posters in the cafeteria. Apparently, the organizers had been flooded with cancellations mere minutes after I left their building. It turned out that my match just happened to be on the worst pitch; it was in a small depression on the field so that water would accumulate there before anywhere else, meaning I was the first referee in the tournament to cancel a match.

The next day, the national newspapers ran stories from the tournament with pictures of kids happily splashing around in the puddles. The grass field had turned into a one-foot-deep lake. The organizers did (amazingly) manage to save the tournament by moving hundreds of matches to astroturf pitches all around the city, driving referees around in cars, and sending buses to transport players.

I still wonder about that one organizer I talked to, though. I mean, either he was just oblivious to the amount of water out there, or he genuinely thought football could be played in a lake.

Related:
Please Observe Our Looks Of Disdain

Growing up, I lived very close to my elementary school, about five blocks away. Like any child, I was very eager for days off of school due to weather, but we hardly ever got snow days; the local snow plows were too efficient.

One day, it was raining very hard. But this wasn’t normal rain. I can clearly see that this was freezing rain, turning to ice the second it touched the ground. Everything, especially the snow piled where grass once had been, was covered in a sheet of ice.

Excited and having never seen weather like this before, I checked the news and discovered that school was canceled. I told my dad.

He insisted that school wasn’t canceled; school wouldn’t be canceled for a little rain.

He demanded that I walk to school. Now, even though I lived only five blocks away, I lived at the top of a small hill, and school was at the top of a different small hill. There was a very significant valley in between. A person could only go around the valley by walking on a couple of streets that didn’t have sidewalks; I was forbidden to walk on those streets.

That day was supposed to be show-and-tell day, so I loaded up my backpack with my favorite rock: a random hunk of conglomerate about the size of a sack of flour I had found one day. I was a very strong — but very stupid — child. It took up most of the space in my backpack, but I also added my three favorite books, my lunch (a thermos of soup, a sandwich, and an apple), a stuffed animal, a calculator which I was forbidden to use by the teachers, a notepad/diary, several pens, pencils, markers, and erasers, and a thermos of hot cocoa I’d made for myself because this was looking like it would be a hot cocoa sort of day.

Leaving the house, I immediately started to slip and slide on the sidewalk, so I switched to all fours. I told Dad it was very slippery, but he didn’t care; he wanted me to go to school myself and report back to him if it was closed.

So, I started to the sidewalk. I slid down the driveway and managed only barely not to slide into the street. Then, I stood back up and attempted to walk down the hill into the valley.

I slipped, fell on my butt, and slid the entire way down into the valley. Then, I was trapped.

I tried to crawl up the other side. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried to crawl up in the direction of home. I slipped part way up and slid all the way back down.

I tried this repeatedly and started feeling sick and cold and wet, so I opened up my backpack to get my thermos of hot cocoa out. From how many times I had fallen down, my sandwich was smashed, my apple was sauce, my thermos was dented, my pens were all broken, and my favorite rock was shattered. This last thing was the most upsetting to me.

I chugged the hot cocoa angrily and got off the sidewalk into the snow. (I was a stupid kid and couldn’t imagine walking anywhere but the sidewalk prior to that.) This worked, and I made it to the top of the hill. After that, it was a short walk to the school.

One of my teachers was standing in the driveway waving cars away from the school. School was canceled. I made her write it in my notebook for me with one of the pens that had survived, and I started the trek back home.

I ate my soup at the bottom of the valley on my way back home.

Finally, I got home. Dad was still there, and I was covered in ice. Angrily, crying, I told him school had been canceled, he was an idiot for not listening to me in the first place, and my favorite rock was broken. It turned out work had been canceled for him, too. I was in first grade, and I understood that the weather was unsafe better than my dad did.

Five years later, still in elementary school, we had another bout of freezing rain. And once more, Dad forced me to walk all the way to school. This time, the doors were just locked, and there were no teachers handing out pamphlets. Once more, I returned home to yell at him for not trusting my instincts. I had never once said that school was canceled when it hadn’t been.

A few years after that, still in elementary school but nearing the end of my elementary career, it was freezing rain again. Dad still didn’t believe me, but this time my school had a website. So, I pulled up the website and triumphantly showed him that school was canceled due to freezing rain.

This happened one final time, in high school. I had to pull up the website to show him once more that freezing rain was considered enough of a threat to human life to cancel school.

After that, I left home, left the state, and went to college and later to work. I… don’t talk to my Dad as much as he maybe wants, but he never really respected my opinions growing up, so I’m reluctant to share much with him.

I am now free to refuse to go anywhere during freezing rain, and I do so openly. Everyone at work knows that if I’m not coming in, it’s because of unsafe conditions. It’s at the point that people will call me to see if I’m coming in, and if I say I’m not, they say they won’t, either!

I go to the bank one day, and the armored car guy has blocked all of the disabled parking spots! It’s winter, it’s icy, and I am on crutches after leg surgery. As I’m driving past, feeling annoyed, I see the driver actually getting out of the vehicle.

Me: “Excuse me. You’re parked diagonally over three disabled parking spots. Do you mind moving so that I—”

Before I can finish speaking, he flips me the one-fingered salute.

It takes me a while to process that he actually just did that, but then I take a picture of him and his truck, and from my phone, I email the armored car company — after I have parked, of course!

I get a call the next morning from an unknown number.

Caller: “Hi, this is [Armored Car Company]. Is this [My Name]?”

Me: “I am.”

Caller: “Hi. We’re calling to let you know that we fired the driver at the end of his shift yesterday. That was the third complaint about him specifically doing that!”

Me: “Oh, wow.”

Caller: “We didn’t want him representing our company or our vehicles like that. Thanks for making us aware!”

The next week, I was at the bank again, and the same car was there — this time parked properly!

My father used to travel a lot for work. Years ago, he had a flight that made it back to his home airport in Houston, but by the time it landed, the weather there was so bad that all the freeways surrounding the airport were closed. My father (and many other stranded passengers) spent the night in the airport’s Presidents Club.

Enough stranded passengers ended up in the Presidents Club that they had to close and lock the doors when the club reached its maximum occupancy. There were still passengers who came up, saw the closed and locked door, and rattled or banged on the door in an effort to get inside. The employees would open the door just long enough to say, “See the sign that says we’re at maximum occupancy? We’re not joking,” and then they’d shut and lock the door again.

Unfortunately, the weather also meant that the club employees couldn’t leave when their shift was over, nor could their replacements come to take their places. At a certain point, a lot of the stranded passengers, including my father, told the staff, “You go rest. Just show us where things are, and we’ll make our own drinks and snacks.”

Then, of course, you had the passengers who were highly affronted that the paid staff should get to rest, and the stranded passengers should take care of themselves. “I’m a Presidents Club member! You’re supposed to take care of me, not the other way around!”

Most of the passengers were perfectly content to take care of themselves, and they ignored the passengers who whined.