Summer! I didn’t mean it! Come back!
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
I have often remarked that I prefer winter’s cold to summer’s heat.
A guy can layer on more clothes and wrap up in quilts in the winter, but there are only so many coverings a person can shed in the summer without totally grossing out his friends, neighbors and anyone else caught in the field of vision. Not to mention getting arrested and being tossed into a suffocating, sweaty cell. Or a gym with a court order to shape up.
But this current cold snap has me shivering, er, dreaming of those indecent days of summer.
As the great philosopher Will Rogers remarked, “If it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime.”
During the smoldering days of summer, I don’t want to run around in the buff, I want to snuggle up to my air conditioner.
Sub-freezing temperatures is a whole different animal — a penguin, I’m guessing.
The great philosopher Billy Connolly once said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes.”
By the time I cocoon myself in all my winter wear, I no longer need to fear falling on the ice. I have so much padding wrapped around me, it’s like I’m wearing Carhartt Bubble Wrap.
I shouldn’t need to bundle up that much. Like a walrus, I pack around a fair amount of personal, blubbery insulation. But like everything else sagging about my body, the older I get, the less it seems to work.
I agree with the great philosopher Carl Reiner: “A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
Bundling up does provide a certain amount of entertainment. Every winter, I discover “treasures” that I left buried in the pouches of my heavy coat or the pockets of my flannel-lined pants.
So far this winter, I have turned up 37 cents, two telephone numbers without names, a bill that’s now 10 months overdue, a single glove, a half-eaten cookie (those don’t look like my teeth marks), and another scrap of paper with a name but no explanation (Aloysius Q. Veeblefester, who are you one of those phone numbers?) and the ticket I accused someone else of misplacing.
Also while packing on the puffy stuff, I discover how much of my own puffiness I packed on since last winter — probably because I was cold then, too, and my body decided it needed more personal insulation.
Once I get outside, I can experience “IKEA rain” — snowmen falling from the sky; some assembly required.
Dear Summer, all those complaints I filed about how insufferable you were a few months ago — I take it back! Something along about 70 would feel nice right about now.
Then I also wouldn’t have to go on a date with my shovel.
Pelt the whiner with snowballs at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.