Glad global warming left us for a while
By Jerome Christenson / Winona Daily News

It’s cold.

That’s good.
All right, that thought does come easier on the last day of January than it would have on the first of December n but after two months of fearing my home state somehow slipped to the wrong side of the Mason-Dixon line, the familiar tingle of ears turning to ice is as reassuring as it is painful. Minnesota still has a winter and all is — or at least might be — right with the world.

It wasn’t that long ago, I never would have said that.

This surge of cryophilia is a fairly new experience for me. Pretty much from the time I could first tell July from December, the days on my calendar between Thanksgiving and the vernal equinox were bordered in black. Five months out of the year I’d huddle in the library stacks, paging through back issues of National Geographic, envying the native boys prancing naked in the Amazonian jungle, swearing to myself I could get used to eating broiled grubs and bat meat if I never had to put on a pair of galoshes again. I grew up hating the cold, but I was colder then.

I know Al Gore has charts, graphs, statistics and interminable PowerPoint presentations that prove it’s warmer now than it was then, but when you start with winter in Minnesota, a couple of degrees does not Miami make. Besides, it wasn’t so much that the weather was colder — it was me being colder that’s made the difference.

Why was I colder? Simple. I spent more time — a lot more time — out where the cold was.

And I had to be cool while doing it.

It’s hard to think of anyone more doomed to misery than a Minnesota teenager in the days before progressive parenting. Our folks figured that since the Lord gave us feet, and they bought us shoes, the least we could do to show our gratitude was to use them. The idea that Dad would give up 20 minutes of Jackie Gleason to chauffeur his offspring anywhere but the emergency room was as inconceivable as the thought of a kid having a TV and telephone in his own bedroom — some things just weren’t going to happen on this planet in our lifetimes.

So we walked — in the summer when it was hot and in the winter when it was not. As small and medium sized children this wasn’t all that awful — we had moms to dress us funny. From the four-buckle galoshes on our feet to the quilted hood tied tight over the felt-and-flannel ear-flap cap on our heads, every 8-year-old was insulated from the cold like chubby little arctic seals. With nothing but eyes and steam visible to the outside world, we were like little woolen greenhouses — snowy on the outside, moist and tropical underneath. Winter, summer, it was all the same to us.

Then in seventh grade we discovered girls — and winter.

There’s a reason when I see a pretty girl I feel an involuntary shiver. It was to impress a pretty girl — any pretty girl, heck, any girl period — that I gave up my scarf and my parka, mukluks and mittens, hat, long johns, thick gray wool socks and fuzzy flannel shirts. By 13, the Inuit-look was out no matter how deep the drifts or how arctic the wind chill. We trudged across town hatless, gloveless, in penny-loafers and Sears-Roebuck slacks, while our no-brighter distaff counterparts risked frostbite in parts we guys barely dared imagine as the demands of fashion sent micro-mini’s a-flutter in the cold northwest wind.

We had the California look down pat. It was the California climate we were sorely in need of. We were so cool we risked hypothermia going between home and high school, but we were slow learners. Year after year we were seemingly taken by surprise when it turned cold in January, though our parents and younger siblings seemed to have a solid mittened-grasp on that reality. But on the other hand, they just weren’t cool.

Which may be why my winters are so much warmer of late. There’s a point — about the time a man’s age and waist size intersect —that cool begins to take a distinct second, then third and fourth place to comfort, convenience and common sense. When discussions of “hip” begin to feature words like “replacement,” “ceramic” and “stainless steel,” the social stigma of appearing in public in a parka also begins to dissipate. I don’t need Mom to dress me funny, now I do it myself and when I do it right, that Minnesota cold actually feels kind of good. Makes me feel a bit like a kid again.

That’s always good.

Contact Jerome Christenson at jchristenson@winonadailynews.com or 453-3522.

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