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Winter Blows Posting Date: Jan 25 2009 11:53PM The way I remember it, everything was more bad-ass when I was a kid. The summers were hotter. The winters were colder. The rains of spring were wetter. The winds of autumn were sharper.
Summers were so hot you could step out of air conditioning and slam into a wall of heat and humidity so powerful and oppressive that it would leave a bruise. The winters were so cold that one breath would ice cube the lining of your nose like Birdseye corn.
Things were bad. We were small. Snow banks were six stories tall. Icicles were swords. Storms happened every time you sneezed. Slush was a handy snack. Getting frostbite was considered a hobby. You owned one jacket and layering had yet to be invented. You had wet feet five days a week from walking the halls of school in socks because you left your shoes at home. Yellow snow was a life-threatening danger. The worst crime you could commit as a child was to throw a snowball on school grounds. Winter was a living hell … if hell were, you know, really cold.
The interesting part of those winters, though, was that you just sort of stumbled through. You went from drift to drift, from sleet to sleet, from frozen limb to frozen limb and you barely thought of the suffering because you were too busy putting your boots over the hot air registers and blow drying your sodden mitts to notice. When winter finally let its grip slide a little and spring poked its way into the unremitting pain, it came as a surprise, like winning the lottery or being hit by a meteor. Spring had a sort of amusement park quality to it that sugar-coated the five months of winter.
Now, however, things are different. Adult winter is an entirely different experience from childhood winter. The snow banks are smaller. The garment layers are thinner and the Gore-Tex is available. No longer do we walk to school in the face of a gale but drive to work with heated seats dialed up as high as they will go. We have the internet giving us weather predictions down to the half-hour and we have the financial wherewithal to book a last-minute trip to Vegas to break up the cold months. Heck, global warming has pushed the start of real winter back five weeks and started spring at least two weeks early. Now, you’d think that winter would be a breeze.
So why does winter blow so much harder now than it did back then? Why do adults suffer winter so thoroughly and children wear the discomforts of winter so lightly?
Well, it’s all about vision. To a five year old, vision is realizing that you need something to do after lunch. To an adult, vision is a ten-year plan done up in Microsoft Project and distributed via e’mail to the Blackberries of your family and friends. It is the result of the work of a team of professional facilitators, two graduate degrees, a career coach, a couples counselor, a personal banker, your financial advisor, three lawyers, an accountant and a massage therapist. In short, we adults look too far ahead and when all we see is week after week of short-daylight, low-temperature, bad-driving-conditions, double-layer-jacket, snow-shoveling, windshield-wiper-fluid-refilling, can’t-walk-the-dog, salt-stain-the-shoes days ahead, you tend to get a little low.
Today, by most measures, was a pretty good day. I saw the sun. I got out of the house. I spent time with my family. So why do I feel so punished by the seasons and the elements? It’s because winter messes with my vision.
I wanted to pick up the dog poop in the backyard. Too cold. I wanted to wash my car. Too cold and too pointless. I wanted to go golfing. Too frozen. I wanted to go for a jog. Too slippery and too out of shape. I wanted to cut the lawn. Too buried under nine thousand feet of snow. I wanted to wear open-toe, sling-back shoes. Too risqué and too out-of-season with my black wool pantsuit.
Winter blows when you’re an adult. It really does. |
