School Closings

A few weeks back, Hurricane Ike wreaked havoc hundreds of miles inland in the United States, causing significant damage and power outages in such states as Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio – this is not an exhaustive list. As a result, my mother’s school district called off three days of school. I’d heard of snow days in those parts, but hurricane days were something entirely new.

I live in North Africa, where hurricanes simply don’t happen. In fact, our only involvement with hurricanes is to generate hot air, send it on its way toward North America and wait to see whether or not it picks up sufficient strength to make a name for itself. We must have found a formula that worked about a month ago, but alas, the schoolchildren in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio have yet to acknowledge our involvement, which afforded them a few unanticipated homework-free days.

In North Africa, calling off school requires us to be a bit more creative. We use the moon and pancakes. The following account is (more or less) how we gained an extra vacation day for the coming week.

I got the call at a little after nine o’clock. Some friends invited me to join them for a pancake breakfast. I obliged. An hour or so later, I received another call. It was my boss, the director of the school. He asked me where I was, so I told him I had just finished eating pancakes. After a pregnant pause, he asked, “Are there any left?” There were. He joined us within ten minutes.

We all sat around the table, chatting and watching my boss eat pancakes. Apparently the pancake chef had observed the moon at five o’clock and forecasted that a new moon was coming sooner than previously anticipated. At the end of Ramadan, a new moon equals a national holiday.

Then one of the principals wandered in, and suddenly I found myself in an ad hoc faculty meeting. The director, still busy eating pancakes, offered the principal a pancake. The principal refused. The director offered the lone pancake multiple times, but when he became convinced that the principal would continue to refuse the lone pancake, the director used it for illustrative purposes.

“I understand that there’s a 75% chance that the new moon will come,” the director said, “and if I can get it up to 80%, I’ll call off school right now.” Those at the table discussed whether or not the holiday came when the new moon arrived, or whether it came the day after the moon vanished from the sky. “Did you see a sliver,” the director asked the pancake chef, “or did you see this much?” And with that, the director took a crescent-shaped slice off the edge of the lone pancake.

The pancake chef stuck with the story of what she had observed at five o’clock, but she compliantly verified her forecast on the Internet. The director, filled with pancakes and syrup, decided right then to call off a day of school.