Baby, It's Cold Outside

This morning there is about 2” of new snow on the ground, or just enough to make you pay attention on your drive into work since you have to watch out for some of those 4 wheel drive perverts who actually seem to drive faster on ice and snow to flaunt the rules of common sense and physics. Anyway, it actually had to “warm up” to snow. Today it’s 25 or so; yesterday morning it was 5 and the wind chill was around -25 ---the kind of cold that makes your skin hurt even on the short walk to the building from your car. For only the second time in my life, with living in Alaska being the first time, I wear gloves when I’m outside.

Now, I realize Loudon is in a little more temperate zone, and at 17 you feel invincible to even the common cold, but throughout most of high school I wore either a sweater or an Eisenhower jacket; one of those WWII OD green, wool jackets that stopped at the waist. That was it. No overcoat, gloves, boots, hat, or even an umbrella; just that sweater or jacket whether it was raining, snowing, fall, winter or spring, and even though I hoofed it everywhere.

And the thing is, I don’t remember a lot of other people bundling up either. To begin with, the lockers wouldn’t hold that much, and who wants to hang a wet umbrella in their locker to drip on the stack of old papers I had stashed in the bottom? That means I would have to clean the locker, and I’m a guy, so there is no way that was going to happen.

I think I was better in those days at prioritizing my worries.