Slightly Off the Mark

 She pops out for a day, shows a little leg, smiles demurely, and disappears again, leaving her anxious suitors to suffer through more cold and wet. It’s hardly any wonder that the symbol of weather should run hot and cold, but sheesh – enough is enough.

The stupid groundhog predicted an early spring, but he didn't say it would come all at once. What is a groundhog, anyway? It’s a big rat. Set a trap, somebody.

Even more than usual, our weather pattern looks like a heartbeat on an EKG. It reminds me the old days, when I walked to school barefoot, in a raging blizzard every morning and a blistering heat wave in the afternoon. (Uphill both ways, blah blah blah.)

I really should get around to admitting I only lived two blocks from school.

As a result of the bouncing weather, some people say they'd rather it just stay cold all the time. Their brains are still frozen. Saying cold all the time instead of warm some of the time is like saying that, since you can’t eat 24 hours a day, you’d rather just starve. To carry the heavy comparison further, I’d rather weigh 300 pounds but be alive than be the first member of my family to voluntarily starve to death.

Most of my best winter photos are taken from inside. I care less about glare than I do about frostbite.

Summer now goes by much more quickly than it used to, and winter – strange as our recent winters have been – lasts much longer. When I was a kid, the average summer lasted eighteen months. Seriously. I would go out to play after breakfast, and wouldn’t come in again for three days, just in time for lunch. The summer when I turned nine lasted for over six years. It’s a science-fictiony mystery, but there you go. We went down to Kentucky for a two week vacation that lasted so long we had to cut down trees to get the car back on the road.

And it never got hot. Kids could wake up in the hospital with two IV’s in their arms to rehydrate them, and have no idea they were ever overheated. Then they’d go home and run back outside again. Sure, most of us didn’t notice the cold, either, but we sure noticed when we started getting feeling back into our limbs. It was like getting a power pinch from our least favorite aunt – all over.

Isn't this fun? SO much fun. Later I'm having hot chocolate and a good cry.

Even the bad things about summer are proof that summer is good:

Bugs? Hate ‘em. But why do they come out during the spring? Because during winter they’re dead. Everything’s dead. It’s a dead season. Mother Nature is dead – the first lightning storm of the spring is like a giant defibrillator, starting her heart back up.

No lawn mowing during winter. Why? Grass is dead. No poison ivy during winter. Why? Dead. Snakes? Dead. No spiders during the winter. (Spiders are not bugs. Bugs are just bugs – spiders are evil.) Even spiders know dead when they see it, although many think it looks like the bottom of my shoe.

Hot and humid is unpleasant, I get that, but nobody's car ever slid into a snowbank because the sun was shining too much. No poor match girl ever froze to death under a shade tree during an Independence Day celebration.

Tornadoes? Terrible things, mile-wide vacuum cleaners. But blizzards have covered half the friggin’ country. Besides, no matter how strong it was, no meteorologist ever mentioned “tornado” in the same sentence as “wind chill”.

Winter even smells dead – spring smells of fresh cut grass, and lilacs, and that earthy scent that comes with a warm summer rain. And yes, it also smells of hot asphalt, and dairy farms, and sweat, but that’s a small price to pay for driving down a country road with the window open and breathing deeply as you pass a cornfield.

Pretty, isn't it? And DEAD.

Almost everything’s green, with patches of other bright colors like spotting a forgotten twenty dollar bill. Green is life. Winter has no color: It’s black and white and dead all over. I could also go for the cliché and mention the sounds – birds, frogs, insects, all more relaxing than the sound of sleet on siding, or furnaces kicking on. Finally, lest we forget, the feel of walking around in shorts and shirtsleeves, without the accompanying frostbite.

Warmth makes everything a little better. Sure, you can’t store your frozen goods on the back porch, but that’s a small price to pay for opening the window and breathing real air.

So come on out, Mother Nature, don’t be a tease. And don’t bother bringing your winter coat.

• Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
• Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"
• Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter
• Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/
• Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
• Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter
• Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

Remember: When wrapped in plastic, books make good umbrellas. Use hardcover.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

I love January! Said no one, ever.

Okay, some people actually do love winter, which just goes to show you: Northern Indiana needs better mental health screening. I used to take part in winter activities, but I was young then, and young people just haven’t learned that being miserable isn’t an adventure.

When I was a kid, I loved sledding, snowball fights, and not having to pay the utility bills. Well, I liked them … I never did warm up all that much to winter. Then, one day when I was about fourteen, I came in from building a snow block fort to discover my hands and toes had themselves become snow blocks. My cheeks had taken on a white, Frosty-like sheen.

My face cheeks. Get your mind out of my insulated underwear.

Thawing out involved a process not unlike being stabbed with a thousand white-hot pins and needles, and from that time on I couldn’t stay in cold weather for long before the affected parts started to feel like they’d been shotgunned full of rock salt. It took all the fun out of it.

Today, my favorite wintertime activities involve a book and a cup of hot chocolate. So January does have an advantage: I can catch up on my reading. But that doesn’t really make up for the gas bill.