Weather Wimp · 14 December 2013
I do not know when it happened, but I have become a weather wimp.
It has been bitterly cold here recently. Well, as far as Northwest weather goes, it has been cold. For too long. I know I should not complain, but a couple weeks of cold is too much for me. Especially cold that bites through walls and clothing. Cold that cannot be escaped.
I do not know when it happened, but I have become a weather wimp.
I remember standing out in the cold and snow every winter waiting for the bus as a kid. It got so cold that the snot in our noses would freeze. Back then, we thought it was cool that when we breathed in hard, our nostrils would freeze shut for a moment or two. Now, I wonder why we did not wait until the last possible moment to rush out and jump on the yellow school bus instead of standing in the cold. After all, the bus stop was right in front of our house. I guess we just liked to experience the freezing snot.
Now, I am such a weather wimp that I do not even like being out in the cold long enough to scrape the ice off my car windows.
I suppose part of the process of becoming a weather wimp came when I went to college in Seattle. The temperature was always warmer than the Spokane area where I came from, but somehow it was always cold walking through Red Square at the University of Washington. It was not just the drizzle or the dreariness that came with it. There was something about having humidity with cold that I have never gotten used to. The damp cold that just bites through every layer of clothing always makes me shiver.
A couple friends of mine are surely reading this and laughing at my wimpiness. After all, they come from North Dakota where there is real cold. Anything above zero degrees Fahrenheit, damp or not, is balmy in the winter there. They might even assert that anything below minus 20 is balmy. (In fact, the balmy temperature threshold gets even lower when they are in the room together.)
I used to be that way too, until I became a weather wimp.
Unfortunately, I no longer have that bravado insisting that I can brave any weather with just a thin windbreaker. Or that I like it so cold that boogers freeze in my nose. I have changed a lot since those days. Now I know I need seventeen layers of clothing to survive the short cold spell.
I am surely a weather wimp.
Even so, I doubt I could survive where it is balmy all the time. Someplace where the temperature only changes ten degrees or so during the entire year. Someplace where a five degree dip in temperature necessitates a sweater. Someplace where I never need a parka or an umbrella. I do not know that I would enjoy living in a place where the weather never changes. I do not know that I could get used to warmer climes.
At least I used to say that before I became a weather wimp.
It is funny the things you think of when the weather is cold. I used to fondly reminisce about those cold days of freezing snot. Now, I dream of warm weather and sandy beaches.
I never realized until now that I had become such a weather wimp.
© 2013 Michael T. Miyoshi
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Published 31 December 2013 in The Monroe Monitor & Valley News
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