Friday, March 9, 2007

Dead of Winter

With the weather in New York City expected to reach the high 40s this weekend, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss winter. I was born and raised in California, and continue to think of myself as a Californian at heart, despite having lived on the east coast for various educational and occupational reasons for a number of years now.

People from the east coast say a lot of ridiculous things, including "the Knicks need to be winners for the NBA to succeed", "I don't get the whole avocado thing", and "I could never handle an earthquake - I MEAN, THE GROUND ACTUALLY MOVES!" but by far the dumbest thing east coasters say is "I like winter".

The most popular rationale for this bit of stupidity is that "you can't appreciate spring and summer without winter". Apparently you need to suffer through harsh winds and subzero temperatures to actually enjoy warm weather. Imagine, for a moment, if you extended this philosophy to other areas of your life. "Man, I really hate eating brussel sprouts, but I eat them nonstop for 3 months because afterwards, cheeseburgers taste EVEN better!" "I know sending notes to friends via carrier pigeon is somewhat unreliable, but in April, when I turn my phone back on, it's going to feel like a technological miracle!" In truth, the whole "deprivation causes greater appreciation" is something of a red herring. Your appreciativeness shouldn’t be your goal - happiness should be. If the weather is 75 degrees every day, I'm going to be happy with the weather every day, end of story. Appreciation of the weather is entirely the wrong goal.

Then, of course, there's snow. If a lot of snow is forecasted, someone at work will smile and say something moronic like "maybe we'll get a snow day!" Hoping for a snow day is a reflex memory of childhood days people can't seem to let go. True, when you were a little kid, snow MAYBE meant a snow day, and you didn't have to go to school. But I'm not 6 years old anymore, and when it comes to work, it's pretty much never a snow day. For your job to call a snow day, the blizzard has to be so massively bad that you'd be crazy to wish for it. At the office, I ask when there was a snow day, and get responses like "In 2003 there was this one blizzard that left like 5 feet of snow and I think we got one day off - or maybe we just left the office earlier".

As for snow itself, while I concede it looks pretty for about 20 minutes, it quickly become disgusting and dirty, plus all the shoveling that has to be done and scraping off windshields. Water freezes over and people slip on ice and get hurt. Traffic is slowed significantly - all so you can build a snowman, which I bet none of you have done (while not on vacation) in at least ten years. And don’t start with this skiing-sledding nonsense - Californians can do that too, they just need to drive a little bit inland.
Snow's not even the big problem - these brutal winds are. When the wind is physically hurting my face, I don't think "wow, four seasons - what a great dose of variety!" - all I think is "brrr cold cold cold brr brr cold cold cold". Thankfully, this past winter hasn't been as brutal as it could have been, but I still can't wait for spring. And I shouldn't WANT to wait for spring either.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

wait... you mean its not normal to eat brussel sprouts for 3 months to appreciate cheeseburgers better??

haha, poor bitter californian. maybe you've just never enjoyed a nice warm cup of cocoa near a fire while the winds were howling outside. obviously, winter isn't great because of walking out doors in the freezing f@$$@!#$ cold... its great because of all the warm coziness you get to experience indoors! if we were homeless, we would not appreciate winter. i promise.

Anonymous said...

Amen...that's all I have to say. The changes of the leaves and the hot cocoa don't make up for the miserableness that is being late for work and having to spend 10 minutes scraping the ice off your car with the wind whipping your skin

madphoenix50 said...

I lived in Buffalo for 10 years and Milwaukee for 11 years. Winter sucks.

All the positive things about winter can be appreciated in a weekend's visit. I see no reason to want to endure the negatives for 3 months.

High of 65 and partly cloudy today. It's not that great today. Haha.

Unknown said...

tru dat. i'm tired of this frigid weather. how can you actually enjoy snow in march?

Anonymous said...

not to play devil's advocate or anything but let's be honest here. you've never shoveled or scraped your car in your sunny california life, and unless you are 4 years old or 80, you deserved it if you fell on the ice. so what the hell are you whining about. all you have to do is expense a cab or call a car to get to work. it's not like you're one of the common people who actually has to take public transportation every day to work. it sounds like you're not complaining about the snow at all but just having to work in general, and that's a whole different story. and i have built an awesome snowman in the last five years. biatch.

vishal said...

HAHAHA

Eric Ma said...

Although I have not suffered the way some others have, I have suffered.

And that's not even the point, although if we're gonna go there, I'll point out that cabs are slower in snow haha.

jo said...

hey you chose to live in NY. i have no sympathy.

actually even in dallas i had to wake up 15 min earlier to scrape ice off my windshield all winter...

Anonymous said...

we've gotten one snow day this year.....its possible.

Anonymous said...

Boo hoo, poor you. Time to move back to California.

Eric Ma said...

Haha - I don't think winter is the end of the world, but I maintain that it's silly to think having winter is BETTER than not having it