Say, old man winter, do you mind showing yourself to the door? Can we offer you a bus ticket to Toledo or Topeka? Have you visited sunny Aruba this time of year? We hear it’s fabulous.
I know that you haven’t even officially begun your trek down here to Florida. The way it’s been, it was looking like we wouldn’t see you at all. And that was fine with me. I’m good with the 80-degree Christmases and the fact that blooming flowers are already coughing up pollen all over our cars. I’ve been spoiled — we’ve all been, and we’re not ready for your annual onslaught.
So can you just forego us a year?
As we face the harshest, coldest, most bitter weather we’ve seen, I’m concerned not all of us will make it. Some might just pick up and move to Guatemala or someplace where it’s 85 degrees this time of year and you can get a suntan that resembles crispy bacon.
Others will try to get into winter clothes, sweaters and jackets they have no business wearing anymore and will simply implode. None of us true Floridians are really prepared for these cold blasts. We don’t have the wardrobe for it and need to get creative. That’s why you see guys draped in batts of insulation and women walking about town with live cats wrapped around their necks.
We don’t really know what we’re doing, and when northerners tell us to layer up, we ask, “How will wearing two pairs of flip-flops keep my feet warm?”
Sure, some will say it’s nice to have a change and experience a little chilliness once in a while. But those are also the same people who tell you that most UFO abductions take place when it’s 75 degrees out, or how once when they stopped taking their medication they put on a naked-Elvis sumo wrestling exhibition at the mall. These are not people worth listening to.
People who come here from up north talk about how they miss the seasons when they get here. I can’t understand this. We have seasons. They’re called summer and summer-lite.
Others will say that the cold weather helps cut down on the mosquito population, but you know I kind of miss 85 percent of my body being covered in red, itchy welts that make me look like a big walking chicken pox.
I like the feeling of heat stroke in January, or how my power bills are so low that the electric company calls begging us to use something — ANYTHING! — that will make the electric meter spin.
But now comes your January vengeance and a jolt of arctic air that will slice through us and make us dig desperately through drawers in search of that one sweater we own which wasn’t even in style back when we got it in 1984. It looks like a cross between a tie-dyed alpaca and a hula skirt that was runover by a truck.
We’ll pull out jackets that no longer fit us, cutting off all circulation to our extremities. We’ll search out leather gloves that smell musty, mildewy and probably hold a gang of street moths who will fight to the death for their home.
All this to battle your blistering chill for a couple days.
I can stand you better if you start showing up gradually, easing us into the chilliness a little at a time. We Floridians need to adjust and allow our blood time to thicken up. But this is too much for us to take. For crying out loud, we’ve been sitting out on the porch in shorts for the past 11 months. There are some of us who don’t even know what a sock looks like, much less know how to put one on.
It’s just plain cruel. We’re Floridians, dang it. We’re not happy unless we can roast a steak on the sidewalk or bake a potato in the glove compartment.
So if you must, get on with your tailbone-tickling cold. But we’re going to have to ask that you vacate the premises by mid-February. Otherwise, we’re calling the sheriff.