Which is the same heartfelt word I use every year when the first snow falls, uninvited, into our lives.
It’s not that I can’t appreciate the beauty of fresh fallen snow before it inevitably turns into ugly gray slop. If the snow would fall when the temperature was, say, 75 degrees I’m sure I’d love it. But in Ohio, at least, it seldom snows when it’s 75 degrees. Mostly it only snows when it’s really, really cold. I hate really, really cold and I don’t want to live in it.
And now science has provided even more incentive to pack my bags and leave my Columbia Titanium winter coat behind. According to an international study reported this week in The New York Times, “cold weather is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 20 times more deaths than hot weather.”
Forget all that malarkey about how cold weather builds character and makes those of us who live in it healthier and hardier than those of them who indolently lounge around in subtropical climes sipping pina coladas. The character-building benefits of cold weather is a canard created by the operators of ski resorts and the sellers of bulky sweaters to capitalize on people who can’t afford to live in San Diego.
Cold weather doesn’t make you a better person with more character — it just makes you a shivering person with a shorter lifespan. And it’s not a matter of traffic accidents on ice-slicked highways or heart attacks caused by shoveling several tons of snow off driveways.
When it turns cold, our blood thickens and causes blood clots and heart attacks, the story explained, even if you’re only just standing outside in it watching other people shovel. And when it’s too cold to stand around outside, we go inside and inhale the germs of other people.
Not only will cold do you in, it’s sneaky about it. If you contract a case of fatal heat stroke, you’ll know about it right away. Cold-related deaths might not occur for three or four weeks after a cold snap.
Of particular interest to me is that cold weather is particularly dangerous for people who are 75 or older. So if I’m really going to move to somewhere warmer, I’d better get going.
I probably don’t have enough time left to wait for global warming to turn Ohio into Arizona.
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