Waxing Nostalgic Debunked

If you live most anywhere in the Northern or Eastern parts of the good ole' US of A, you may have noticed that it's been a bit cold of late.
Just a bit.
The first two days of this week were cold enough to have many, not all, schools closed in Southeastern Michigan.
The Windshield* factor hit minus 20 in some cases and school administrators felt these dangerously low temperatures would be a danger to those kids who walk to school or had to wait outside in the cold/dark mornings for the bus.

This produced quite a ruckus around here. I've heard more 'When I was a kid' comments over the last few days then I can stand. It seems that people are up in arms over the schools being closed because they don't EVER REMEMBER having days off of school because of the temperature.

There are two things about this that is irritating.
1. Just because they can't remember it, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I can vividly remember once when school was cancelled the night prior because of the weather forecast. When the morning came, the promised snow was no where to be found but we still had the day off.
Unless you lived in parts of the state/country where deep cold and heavy snow are a constant, you got days off when the weather was bad. Period. Just because you don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

2. Lets suppose for a second that it's true and people didn't have those days off of school. That 'back in the day' parents did send their kids to school when it was a trillion below zero. Is that supposed to impress me? All that means is that parents took unnecessary risk with their children's lives for no real reason. Missing a day or two of school for the kids because of the weather will have ZERO effect on their education in the long term, but the POTENTIAL damage for children who have to wait out in the cold weather 20 minutes for a bus that may or may not come can be terrible.
I realize that it's only potential damage, but still, is it worth it? Not to me.

Back in those same days, parents didn't cover up electrical sockets, didn't lock-up poisonous kitchen chemicals and didn't have gates up over stairways. For the most part, we all survived. Does that mean taking the precautions that we do now are silly? Of course not. Oh, and for those who didn't survive...only a little precaution; a plastic 5 cent cover, a simple drawer lock, a wooden or plastic gate, would have made a huge impact on their lives.

People often wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of their youth, when in actuality things were rough then too, they just choose to forget. You often hear about the longing for the 'Cleaver' experience or the 'Ozzie and Harriet' life.
Actually, those days had their own sets of trouble that I wouldn't want now. So many stay at home moms had such serious depression and were so over-medicated that the Rolling Stones wrote a song about Mothers Little Helper.
Rape, which happened way too often, was rarely reported because of the impact on the family.
Out of wedlock pregnancies resulted in the young mothers being ostracized and their children being labeled bastards!
Oh let's go back!