Ok, so I admit it - I'm a wimp. I hate being cold. I don't like skiing, or snowboarding or snowshoeing. It's not that I don't like the activity, it's just that if I have a choice between freezing my ass off or sitting inside playing backgammon and drinking a hot chocolate - well... the there is no choice. Got a problem with that??
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but I feel like a heel when I'm out walking my dog at night and I pass someone wearing shorts and a light jacket while I'm wearing (no lie here) two pairs of pants, a winter coat, a scarf, a toque and gloves. I'm not sure, but I think some of these people wearing summer wear all year are just being stubborn - needing to stay in shorts so that they can tell their family and friends out East about how they 'wore shorts at Christmas time'.
This whole issue came to a head this weekend. Sometimes the kids and I will walk over to visit Michelle at her work. On Saturday morning with the sun shining (and no rain!) we decided to venture out. It was a little breezy and chilly and given the fact that our pace is dictated by an inquisitive and stubborn 2 year old girl, I dressed ourselves appropriately for what I thought would be a lot of standing around in the cold. We all wore toques and gloves so that our hands and ears wouldn't get cold - and we wore warmish rain type coats. As we walked, it became increasingly clear that my opinion of proper dress and the opinion of others out walking that morning were quite different. I saw everything from shorts to short sleeves.
During our walk, one chunky, middle aged, power walking woman strutted by, glanced at my kids and asked her friend loudly, "pfft... where's the snow?"... and chuckled. Now, what I should have said was "pfft... where's the circus?" but alas it wasn't until an hour later that Michelle came up with that witty response after I had recounted the story to her. Although armed with a good comeback, it was obviously far too late for me to venture back outside to find our portly walker. The only recourse left for me was to sit down and blog about it ;-)
Besides, going back outside didn't sound too appealing. I mean, who wants to go outside when it's so cold?
Mean people suck. And I hear you about those psychos who walk around in shorts when the temperature is -5; this is clearly a cry for attention. What other possible motive can you have for doing that? Unless you control the temperature every where you go (home, office, etc), how precisely can you go from -5 to 20 wearing the same clothes? You can't - so they're sucking it up in hopes that you'll think they have a large pee-pee because they don't care about the weather.
ReplyDeleteAs far as coming up with a retort to the power walker (don't get me started there), I have a stock asnwer for shit like that: "It's not hurting you any", which is really just a polite form of "Why do you care? Mind your own business". I'm, shall we say, a little obsessive-compulsive, which occasionally causes me to exhibit rigid, sometimes outwardly peculiar behaviour. I'm not going to list these things off, but know that I generally have to ensure that all the silverware is perpendicular to the edge of the table.
At any rate, when somebody does this and it annoys me (or sometimes, hurts my feelings - I generally *know* I'm doing something odd, I can't help it), I just hit 'em with "It's not hurting you any", which saves me from having to come up with a zinger on the spot.
And, because one can't make this point too strongly, what's "normal" about wearing shorts in January? Seriously, I bet these people wear white after Labour Day, too.