Ahhh, feel that? Recognize the sensation? Feeling returning to your fingers and toes.
We forgot that, poor Floridians that we are. Unaccustomed to brutal winter weather. Polar vortexes? That sounds like something we order from an ice cream truck. Cool. Refreshing. Summer.
Not something that fries our yards. Freezes our pipes. Forces us to bundle up in whatever is available — “Will anyone look at me funny if I wear this Christmas tree skirt around my neck?”
My bird bath looked like a skating rink for squirrels.
Thick ice in a bird bath!?! Come on, it’s Florida. Not Wisconsin.
There were icicles hanging from the fountain in the Flagler College courtyard. I get frost bite just thinking about that.
This shouldn’t happen here. It shouldn’t be ALLOWED to happen here. It’s not fair. The rest of the country can go south for warm weather. Here in Florida we’ve run out of real estate. We have nowhere to snowbird. We’re not even allowed in Cuba.
Last week I took the family to Disney. A cold front blew in that night, and throughout the morning the Orlando temperature kept dropping. Forty-five degrees. Forty-four. Finally, 43 degrees. With the wind chill it was 36. Since it’s the Magic Kingdom, that cost extra.
I’ve never experienced Disney on such a cold day. People wrapped themselves in Mickey Mouse blankets like monks or frozen zombies. A Japanese tourist walked into a store, pointed to his feet and said, “Socks? You sell?” My family spent the day playing “count the tourists wearing flip-flops.” I racked up 15.
Silly tourists! Not realizing Florida gets cold.
Or maybe not. Maybe that was summer to them. Coming from minus-20 degrees, this is child’s play. Light jacket weather. Not even a brisk fall day. Meanwhile, the three of us were huddled together on the PeopleMover, wondering if we could find enough wood to build a fire.
At the hotel we watched a father walk his son inside from the pool, wrapped in a towel. “That’s irresponsible,” my wife said.
“Yeah,” I thought. “Kid is probably over-heating in that towel.”
It’s all relative. We Floridians were freezing. Those northerners were putting on sunblock.
So as the tingling in my fingers and toes signals that feeling is returning — and that the warmth is on the way — I’m thankful we only had to weather a day or two of this. That it’s back to normal again. That we can all go outside and buy a Polar Vortex from the ice cream man, the way it was meant to be in Florida. A place where no one should ever have to buy socks at Disney World!