Cold discourses
Emilie Phillips
Temperatures have been wintry recently, and a bunch of my co-workers have been complaining that it is cold. Well, my standard response it to say “this isn’t cold! Cold is the temperature I saw on such and such ski trip.” I was just thinking that maybe that was not the correct response. What I’m really objecting to is their implicit statement that cold is unpleasant and they want it to go away. What I really should say is “isn’t the cold awesome! That means winter is coming, ski season, snowmen and sleading, beautiful blue skies with sparkling frost, winter parties with friends and hot tubbing, and goregous clear starry nights. What is there not to like about a good cold day?”
People here look outside and wonder at how beautiful the snow is. The suburban ones also bitch about how it’ll take hours to get home and how much work it’ll be to clear the driveway. But even they generally get excited about how then they’ll get to build a snowman with their kids.
People notice the weather get colder. They mourn specific activities that the cold blocks, or they complain that they didn’t dress appropriately, but I don’t hear too many complaints about the cold itself here. I had the same feeling in Chicago, very much unlike in Pittsburgh and in New England, where half of everyone is a whiny bitch (and we won’t even being to mention California).