Cold Enough For Ya? ...Dedicated to my friend Billy who's moving back to N.J.

This is dedicated to my really good friend Billy who is moving back to New Jersey at the worst possible time of year....


It's been cold in West Central Florida lately. I mean really, really cold for us acclimated Floridians. It's been in the middle fifties during the day and close to freezing at night. Before all my friends in New England or other cold weather states start laughing at my complaining about the cold you have to understand something. In Florida you become acclimated to the heat I mean it gets like 150 degrees in the Summeer with 110% humidity. It takes like three days for you to fully dry off after taking a shower. I am so acclimated to the heat that opening the refrigerator door makes me shiver, and walking down the frozen food aisle at the super market can lead to hypothermia if the proper precautions are not taken. 


Getting back to the cold, I moved from the Northeast because after living in CT & MA for 30 years, I just could'nt take it anymore. I mean in the winter I could bundle myself up so I looked like the Sta-Puff Marshmellow Man and I would still be cold. The cold weather here in Florida reminds me of exactly why I decided to move to a warmer climate.


My reasons for moving to the warm sunny climate of Florida was only partially because of the cold, snow, black ice, salt, taking the trash out and have the wheels pull off the garbage cans because they were frozen to the driveway, all the New Englanders who lived their whole lives there and every single winter forgot how to drive. I mean those reasons alone were more then enough right? Actually that wasent it, it was all the num-nuts that would for some unknown reason, out of the blue, completely out of left field, ask the same assinine question, the question was always the same, "Cold enough for ya?" 


 I mean seriously what kind of question is that? 


For those of you who don't know, in New England it usually starts getting really, really cold in late December or early January. As soon as the first cold snap would hit, I knew it would start. I even tried wearing dark sunglasses or averting my eyes, neither of these tactics worked. I mean here I am bundled up like the Sta-Puff Marshmellow Man shivering, and inevitability someone I knew well, a perfect stranger or possibly a person I knew only in passing would inevitability spring the question "Cold Enough For Ya? 


The first ten or twenty times being asked this I would only smile or come back with some sort of snappy sarcastic remark. I mean really what can you say to a stupid question like that. 


Time moves on... and I hear the question 400-500 more times, it's really not so funny anymore, I have long ago ran out of places to hide, and my entire repetire of sarcastic remarks ran out long ago.


February comes it's my birthday month so I get a reprive near the end of the month.. March comes and I try to find creative ways to never come out of the house. Hell No, I Won't Go. is my new mantra. The snow is piling up and it's unbelievably cold. Hell, I have actually had to crawl out of the second floor window to rake the snow off the roof so the roof doe'sent cave in. What kind of bullshit is that. Kinda hard to rake the snow when your bundled up like the Sta-Puff Marshmellow Man and you cant put your arms down all the way. Try crawling through a small window like dressed up like that.


March comes and I have heard the same "Cold Enough For Ya? question like 1000 times so far and I start to get dark evil thoughts which is totally unlike me as I am normally a very friendly approachable type of person, and all my plans not to leave the house are obviously unworkable as I have to go to work, the store and whatever. Everywhere I go I live in constant fear of the question being sprung upon me by anyone and everyone. Whats wrong with these people? maybe the cold has affected their thought processes somehow. I don't know and I frankly don't care. 


I do however care about my dark thoughts that were running through my head over and over in some bizarre endless loop. I was starting to fantasize things like most people would never imagine. Seriously I was starting to have bizarre fantasies about what I would do to the next person and the Next after that who out of the blue would suddengly ask "Cold Enough For Ya?


In my mind I envisioned that the very next person who sprang the question on me would suffer a fate that was fitting and would cause them to think twice before ever asking such a ridiculous thing again. 


I had it all worked out in my partially frozen mind. I would startegically place myself outside near a very cold metal pole you know like a pole for a street sign or something like that. The very next person that even attempted to ask "Cold Enough For Ya? I would reach out with blinding speed, grab their toungue and stick it to the cold metal pole. I started imagining dozens of people found with their toungues stuck to metal poles all over town. 


Right then and there I decided thAt I had to move from that ridiculously cold climate. Seriously, I certaintly didnt want to be given a sensational name by the press like the "Pole Bandit" or "Toungue Terrorist". Seriously could you imagine a headline reading "Toungue Terrorist Strikes Again"? Seriously, that would be seriously embarrassing.


So, before things got out of hand I packed up and moved to Florida, The sunshine State, where the only thing you hear all the time is "Another Day in Paradise" Whoa..what a minute, I am starting to get those same dark thoughts all over again. What am I to do now? Theres not a frozen metal pole to be found anywhere in the state. I guess I'll have to think about a plan B.


Regards,


Tom