When people thoughtfully ask me if I’m cold, or if I want an umbrella, or if I’m otherwise climatically uncomfortable, I can respond with an enthusiastic, “Heck, no!” to be followed by, “This is nothing. I’m from the worst climate in America!” By which I mean: New England.
People here in Colorado, with its semi-arid, sunny, mild, near-bugless climate don’t really grasp the degree to which a climate can suck. I can tell them, but they don’t really get it. I can give them examples of my experiences with the cold, such as how my lip gloss used to freeze while I waited for the bus to my high school, and we’d break off bits of each other’s wet hair to annoy each other (sometimes big 80’s hair was more of a necessity), but then they’ll say something like, “Well, for some people, though, a really hot climate like Florida is a lot worse.” Yeah, well, New England gets that, too. Hence: the worst climate in America. The summer is hot and humid and muggy and buggy and gritty, and if it gets over 85 degrees, old people start dying.
A good way to cool off from the obscenely hot unpleasantness was always to go for a swim. The local swimming hole was a seasonally dammed-up brook. The brook in question was actually snow runoff that, when in its liquid state, would travel downhill. Using what resembled two metal horizontally-mounted captain’s wheels, the dam would be cranked shut shortly before Memorial Day so the pond could fill, and then opened again by Columbus Day, so that local men could retrieve the testicles that had frozen off and sunk to the frigid bottom when they had unwittingly gone swimming during the summer months.
Of course, other things besides testicles would be left over on the pond bed. Indeed, some testicles wouldn’t be there at all, reportedly having become lodged in their owners’ necks like goiters. Minimal trash from upstream, sure, but lost toys would be there, too. One time I found a gray plastic squid nearly a foot long. That was pretty cool. It became a favorite tub toy of mine, in part because I already knew it would sink to the bottom and lie in wait for small plastic tugboats — plastic tugboats of course being the natural prey of the plastic squid.
I suppose the terrible climate did make me tough, though. Plus, it was largely responsible for my discovery of the plastic squid. I’ve never found a plastic squid in Colorado.
This is by no means a complete list, but…
The average rainfall in any geographical location anywhere.
Any of the names of any current world leaders I didn’t already know.
When the last verified sighting of a living thylocene was.
Who actually is afraid of Virginia Woolf.
What cat livers taste like.
Where the hell Bruce Jenner got that terrible, terrible haircut all those years ago, and whether he ever got it fixed.
The second fourteen digits of Pi.
Why Phillip eats cold ravioli out of a can.
Who won any World Series or any Oscars that I don’t specifically remember seeing.
Why anybody watches American Idol, ever.
So don’t tell me! This is going great.
I’m afraid I will not be visiting your website to learn more. I feel I have learned enough.
Are you trying to give me some information about the Roseate Spoonbill or what the Thai Bhat is doing? Well, I am not learning it! Lalalalalalalaaaaa!
I am not responding to your plea for me to continue my education in criminal justice, in part because it’s a euphemism for a B.A. in the execution of fascism, but mostly because I am finished learning forever.
Nope, no more learning for me. I’m not even going to remember new people’s names. I’m just going to call them “Hey you,” or something that reminds me of their general appearance, like, “Hey parrotnose.”
I will certainly not be staying up to watch your news broadcast to learn what four things lurking in my bathroom could kill my baby, because a., I don’t have a baby; b., anything in my bathroom that hasn’t killed me yet is clearly too wussy to do the job — I mean, the stench of Phillip’s feet has been known to kill at 60 yards (no, I do not want to know how!) and I’m still around — whatever candy-assed bacteria or eyelash curlers might be in there pose no real threat; and c., as previously noted: through with learning.
If there is anything about which I am not learning the most, it’s Amway. I don’t even want to hear if it’s still around.
Don’t you try to inform me which swimsuit suits my body type, lady, if that is your real name. You don’t know me. And since I am no longer learning things, you can basically just kiss my ass.
If I don’t know it by now, I never will. Because: no more learning! I might even try to get stupider from here on out.
Well, gentle reader, I got my test results back today, and I don’t really have a sucky metabolism so much as I have wicked hypothyroidism. Out of a normal range of 0.4 - 4.5, my TSH is… (wait for iiiiit…) 13.43! I’m really glad to know. Now I can go about getting this bizniss treated.
