A Light Dusting

Growing up on the wide, flat plains of Illinois, there was one thing that I could count on every winter: it was going to be cold. Not cold as in, "Wow, my boogers are freezing right in my nose!" Frankly, if your boogers freeze in your nose, ya put on a swimsuit and go get a tan. New definitions of temperature are necessary in the Midwest. Illinois is routinely so cold that it is not uncommon to ask, "Should my finger be blue like this?"
The Midwest winter is a Beast. An actual Beast. It takes on a persona that people learn to fear and hate.
"This winter is really out to get us this year, isn't it?"
"Mommy, is the weather trying to kill us?"
"This weather has no mercy. It's just heartless."
"I hate this winter. Seriously, I hate it."
Given this (and for many other reasons) I knew from a very young age that I had to get out. I dreaded the Beast. The only possible advantage to the cold is that it gives you a reason to get drunk and forget, but believe me when I tell you that when you live in Illinois, you don't need one more reason to get drunk and forget. So I got out. Right after High School, I packed up my Ma's ride and headed south to North Carolina. Land of milk and honey. Well, technically, the Land of Pepsi and Kudzu, but close enough.
Here's the thing: I think that the Beast wanted me to leave. Pushed me out, in fact. My first Christmas Break back home, the temperature, with wind chill, was over ninety degrees below zero. Again, I say, below zero. The scales surpassed the "skin freezes on contact" phase and dipped below the "full-body ice cream headache" mark and plummeted past the "Hey! Where did my big toe go?" level. We officially hit the "You have got to be f-ing kidding me" line. I prefer to think that the Beast was giving me one final reminder that leaving home was the right thing to do, but looking back now, I guess it makes more sense that the Beast was actually trying to kill me, so that I could never leave. I have been back home many times since and the Beast has never hit quite as hard as it did that day. I won.
Now, after living in the South for many years, my blood having gone from a thick, gooey molasses to a light and slick olive oil, I have been transformed metabolically into a warm weather junkie. But I earned it. I defeated the Beast. I've got a necklace made of its teeth.
And now, after so much painful exposition, I come to the point of my ramblings. Here in the Greensboro area today, schools were cancelled and people stayed home from work. It is around 34 degrees (ABOVE ZERO!) here with a light dusting of snow. But mostly rain. And by a "light dusting", I mean that if it was snowing cocaine, one could not catch a buzz by snorting the entire interstate. With the wind chill, it might reach 20 degrees tonight. Might. In Illinois, we call this weather, "Spring."
I am forced to wonder what kind of pantywaists we are raising in this country. If kids are given a free pass when the weather is uncomfortable or the roads are dusty, what are they gonna do when faced with a real problem? I'll tell ya what: they are gonna pee themselves. And then we've got a nation of thin-blooded, wet-panted sissies that are afraid of a thermometer.
And the Beast loves that. It looks for wet-panted sissies and sends tornadoes to their trailer parks. The Beast will find you and make you pay. Oh yes. You. Will. Pay.
Man, that last paragraph would sound so cool if you could get that guy that does movie trailers to read it.
Fear the Beast!