Warm Ideas, Fuzzy Thoughts

Cold enuf for ya? Sure you can take the easy way out and go about and have a bad attitude about our recent stretch of weather. You can mutter or scream how none of this is fair, how those people down south complaining about it dropping to twenty six degrees, or the people out west declaring one inch of rain, "the storm of the decade," have got to get a clue. You can kick yourself about choosing to live in an area that is sometimes more suitable for Eskimos. You can roll your eyes at the idiots who have to pretend like the cold doesn't bother them any as they walk around with a thin coat and no hat and no mittens. But what is the use? Like so many other things in life, why not adopt a positive attitude and instead of dwelling on what you can't control, look for the sunny side of things?

For example this winter has been the most opportune time to stretch out and practice an increased vocabulary. You get to use words seldom applicable at other times: frigid, Arctic, bitterly, blasted, polar, goose down, Gortex, unrelenting, hypothermia, nippy, to name a few. Also, I don't think soup has ever tasted better than it has during the past week.

You can also take this time to appreciate the use of all your cold weather clothing you never wear at other times in fear of looking like a dork. It's hard to look cool (no matter how cool you feel) in a parka and a ski mask. One benefit is everyone looks like a dweeb, so you my friend, finally fit in with everyone else.

This has also been an excellent week to learn that your car, your furnace, your water systems, might not work if you were to be transferred to Pluto. Machinery tends to moan and groan about having to function in weather designed best for the Admiral Byrds of the world.

Have a runny nose? This cold works better than any non-prescription decongestant. Just stand outside and breath deeply, and even bodily fluids have a tendency to become icicle like. That disgusting spit you might step in during the dog days of summer? Nothing but a frozen pile to slip on these days.

Like the smell of exhaust? There seems to be plenty of it in the air. The need to warm up one's car means plenty of fumes will hover no matter where you wander. If you are forced to take a bus, that indescribable mixture of every day fumes you encounter now don't seem so out of place.

The tingling sensation of losing all feeling in your extremities can be achieved quicker than any time before. What a blast!? I've never been so pleasantly and surprisingly numb in so many unusual places! The beautiful blue hue of the tips of your cold little fingers? What a unique color! Listen to that dulcet musical sound of your own chattering teeth! That rosy red thing that used to be attached to your face? Why that was your nose!

Also, we all are learning much about relativity. Next time it climbs to anything above zero, man will we ever be thankful for the balmy heat! Any doubters about the concept of wind-chill and whether or not to believe in it, those doubts have either been reinforced or disproved. Now we all actually know what thirty below feels like, without using fancy weather charts. Chances are you may never be colder the rest of your life!

We are all getting a lesson in the universal beauty of nature. You don't need no thermometer, no newspaper, no weather person to tell you it's cold out. You don't even need the Governor of the State to tell you it's dangerously cold out. As soon as you open that door in the morning, you can tell, because it hits you in the face like a wall of ice.

That irrational annual fear you have about the Earth breaking out of its orbit and hurtling away from the sun? Maybe people will start to take you more seriously now. And if you were to ever fall off the face of the planet, this might actually be what it kinda feels like.

Best of all this weather has brought us all closer together. Weather always is unfortunately, a topic of discussion. But the extreme nature of this stretch of weather has gotten people thinking of it all as a big joke someone upstairs is playing on us to test us. Now even the most inane weather talk seems somewhat comical. And there is that pleasant notion that if it gets any colder, we're all going to have to huddle together to conserve body heat. Walking past people on the street, you can't help but smile as you glance toward your destination, as you look at the unreal world around you, as you look past the layers of clothing, as you ignore the shivering, and know that we are all in this thing together.