Although I am a teacher, I'm thinking back to when I was a kid to answer this.
Now you'd think that this was a very easy question to answer. Of course the last day of school is the best school day of the year. No more dealing with those stupid teachers who just want to yap away while you are trying to play Mad Libs with your friend next to you. Or, if you are a total nerd who loves school, maybe the first day of school is the best school day of the year. To be fair, school is a really great place to socialize and I have even heard some people think learning is fun, but neither of those answers are correct.
The best day of the school year is... any SNOW DAY!!!!!
Oh my God! Probably the best thing about growing up in the Chicago area was the possibility that at any time between October 1st and April 30th, you could be surprised with the ultimate gift and child could receive. No it is not an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time (but I do hear that is better than a football). The greatest gift a kid was receive was a phone call before dawn that ended with your mom saying, "There is no school today because of the snow."
For some reason she never seemed as excited as I was to get this glorious news. Maybe that is why she stopped answering the phone until we were gone for school. But that is OK, this allowed us to play the most incredible interactive TV game ever created. Back in the 1980s, you could turn on channel 9 and they would scroll the names of school closing across the bottom of the screen. If you couldn't wait for that, you could always check out a handy dandy transistor radio tuned to an AM station that would read the list to you.
We would sit glued to the TV until we saw those glorious words, "District 67 is closed."
I will never forget how awesome snow days were when I was a kid. Back then, before the earth had decided we had fucked it up so much that it should randomly warm and cool at inconvenient times, there really was a chance that on any given day during the winter we would get a bonus day off. I still contest there is no finer feeling than a sixth grader waking up on a random Tuesday to find that they had nothing to do that day... and there was freaking snow on the ground!
Now obviously with so much snow on the ground that a school couldn't possibly open, all we could do is sit alone in our house and weep for the day we could return to school. Wrong! The first thing we did was go to walk to the school parking lot that was filled with snow. There we would either climb on the giant mountains of plowed snow and throw sow and ice at each other or we would play tackle football on the snow covering the cement parking lot. Or if you were lucky enough to have a straight, tall slide, you could take a sled and put it on the slide and then crash into the snow at the bottom. If you happen to know some smart older kids, they could build a bump of snow at the bottom of the slide for you to use as a ramp. The only thing more prevalent than broken arms on those days was the screams of joy from all the kids.
And then, after the snow had soaked through your shoes (never boots) socks, elastic on the wrists of the arms on your coat, your scarf, and basically everything, you'd run home, throw all of that wet shit right in the middle of the floor and bust out Jungle Hunt on your Atari 2600. Oh and did I mention all of your buddies come with and toss their wet shit all over too? I'm pretty sure that is the closest to heaven I have ever or will ever be.
So can any of you top a snow day as the
best day of the year?
