Save the Floridians. We’re freezing!
“You liar!” I barked at the sleek digital thermometer, which sat comfy and cozy inside my kitchen. It didn’t even have to brave the weather outside to tell how cold it was. A little rat tail with a temperature probe poked out the window doing the dirty work for it. How lazy!
I stared at it — shocked, but unconvinced. “You drunken monkey,” I scolded it. “You must have your numbers backwards.”
Thirty eight it read … in the middle of the day. THIRTY EIGHT! That was the high! That’s just a few notches above freezing, and small consolation for my poor plants outside which looked like they had all spontaneously combusted in this unprecedented Florida cold snap.
Let me remind you what we already know: We live in Florida. The Sunshine State. Where flip-flops are the state shoe, and possibly their own religion. Most households here only have a single sweater to wear between them, and usually it has a clump of fake plastic holly on the front — a gift from a cold-weather aunt up north.
We’re tough and hardy people who can take almost anything. I was once carried off by a swarm of mosquitoes and only escaped when they saw a barebacked and overweight Canadian who looked less bony. We brave hurricanes, laughing in the face of 150-mile-per-hour winds — “You can take my roof, but you can’t take me!” We happily live in year-round heat that will melt the paint right off your car. We can survive housing bubbles and bounce back from election debacles. Shoot, you could send giant, four-legged alien piranhas after us and we’d deep fry the whole lot and serve them with hush puppies.
But I say this with no shame: We … don’t … do … cold! Floridians just weren’t made for this.
This past week of freezing temperatures has just about done us in. It’s been unbearable, and I don’t know how northerners do it. Days without sun, or human contact, or trips to the grocery store, or having actual sensation in your toes.
On Saturday — the coldest, if my hypothermic brain recalls properly — I decided to brave the weather and go for a run. Why not? I like the way frost-bitten skin turns purple and then black before eventually falling onto the floor. I had two long-sleeve shirts on, a hat, gloves and a bundle of insulation leftover from the addition wrapped around me. My wife thought I had gone mad. “You know there are less ridiculous ways to kill yourself,” she said.
But I had to get out — had to stretch my legs and get the lungs pumping. Except, halfway down the street it occurred to me my legs were too cold to stretch and my lungs were frozen shut. I crawled back to the house and admitted defeat. My family poured boiling water on me until my joints could move again.
Never will I forget the phone call that morning when my dad rang at 6 a.m. from Tampa. “You’re getting snow,” he said. It wasn’t a question — are you getting snow? No, it was more declarative, like maybe he had ordered some and I should keep an eye out for the UPS truck.
“What? How do you know?” I asked, racing to the window, hoping if we had to endure sub-artic temperatures, it would at least bring the white stuff.
“Take a look at the weather radar,” he said. And it was a sight to see. The whites, grays and pinks usually covering cold, frigid, foreign places I had never been to like Oshkosh and Sheboygan were cruising across the Sunshine State. Sleet, and even snow, it was. In 20-degree weather I stood out front of my house waiting for the first snowflake to fall.
But it never did. I felt ripped off and angry, cursing the cold.
Hopefully, it’s all over now. My mother, who moved up here from Tampa last year, is beside herself. “Human beings shouldn’t have to live like this,” she says. Her yard looks like a wildfire cut through it.
Mine is still covered in a mish-mash of old sheets, towels and plastic. I can only imagine what the northerners passing through must think of us wrapping our foliage in sheets to keep it warm: that we’re either crazy, the worst Christmas decorators ever or truly devastated by the recession.
But that’s all right — we’re Floridians and we’ll bounce back. We’ve got global warming on our side and a whole lot of flip-flops to go around.