Jackets: the End of the Universe

I work at an after-school program for kids. Every day before we take them out for recess we have to judge the weather and decide whether we'll let them outside in long sleeves or if we want to torture them by making them wear their jackets. We woke up this morning to an inch of unexpected snow on the ground, and even though the snow had mostly melted and the sun was out, it was still downright frigid. We informed the kids that they had to wear their coats and they groaned as they always do. Actually, to say that they groaned would be a massive understatement. Their hatred of winter clothing goes so deep, boils so hot, that I frequently fear a full-on military coup staged by 18 seven-year-olds who are still 45 minutes away from snacktime.

Today the mandatory jacket policy enraged one girl in particular - a normally cheerful 2nd grader who I will call G. After I dismissed her to go line up at the door for recess, she approached me with the despondent face of a child whose puppy has just been slaughtered in front of her. "Do I have to wear my jacket?" she asked. "I hate it! It's too heavy!" I calmly explained to her that considering that we had been caught in a flash blizzard a mere two hours earlier, yes, she was to wear her jacket. Upon hearing this news G yanked her jacket down from its hook and stomped to the end of the line, dragging the coat on the floor behind her. She made a final last-ditch effort on her way out the door. She had the hood on her head but her arms weren't in the sleeves and the jacket flapped behind her like a cape. "Arms in, G," I told her, and she crossed them in front of her chest and muttered the requisite "HUMPH!" before brushing past me and heading toward the playground.

Not five minutes into recess I noticed that G, who was already depressed because her best friend E wasn't there today, wasn't playing on the playground like she usually did. I found her, moments later, lying on her back in a patch of sunlight on the bark. Her arms were still crossed, still not in their sleeves. "G," I said, "you need to put your jacket all the way on, please." "But I haaaaate it," she said. "It's too thick and heavy and it's so hot out!" "G, it's 38 degrees. There's a pile of snow two feet away from you. Jacket on."

"Is G staging a sit-in?" my supervisor asked several minutes later, nodding to the gravel next to the portable where G was now sitting. Her arms were finally in her sleeves but her scowl seemed to have replenished itself. I was about to answer when an army of kids trotted up to me ("trotted" is actually quite an accurate verb as they were pretending to be horses), their jackets shoved all the way down to their hooves hands. "Can we take our coats off now?" they asked. "We're boiling!"

Poor things. The shaking of my head must have looked a lot to them like the cracking of a bullwhip.