Colder Then A Well-diggers Ass!!!

I’m Canadian and though I may not be as overtly patriotic as most I do like the finer things of my Canuck heritage: pure maple syrup from the Market in Ottawa, the fiddle music of Cape Breton Island, the oboe-voice of Stan Rogers, Health Care, Shatner and the Kids in the Hall. I’ve got the flag on my suitcase like many a Canadian traveler and with travels Neil Young, The Band and Rush. The poetry of Cohen, the words of Atwood and the works of Robertson Davies have served me well over the years. I’ve jumped hockey team ships as my Grandfather once did. Go Habs Go if you happen to be doing well and Go Leafs Go if you are not. I’ve traveled my land and though not as in depth as I’d like to say I have I can acknowledge stepping foot in all our provinces save for the land of the Newphies but secretly I like to believe that that wacky place is actually part of Sweden. All this said, I negate my Canuckness in two ways. One is my previously mentioned dislike for the rancid liquid Tim Horton’s fraudulently claims to be coffee and the other is the topic of this piece today, the cold!

You’d think I’d be used to such weather. Well, actually, in many ways I am but I jump forward a touch. I grew up in the ass-end of Ontario in a town bordering New York State on the banks of the Saint Lawrence. Winters of my youth were horrid but youths often overlook the chill in replace of the fun that winter can bring. Sledding, great snowball wars, forts and being snug and warm in the back seat as your father grunts disgustedly as he hacks away the steel-like sheet of frost on the windows of the car. As you age, though, winter becomes less enjoyable. Not so much the snow aspect of things, especially for an apartment dweller as myself, but to the adult the slush you have to trudge through to get to work is no longer a puddle to happily stamp in. Cars splash you, pants and shoes are ruined by salted walks, you nearly kill yourself on unseen icy patches and then there are those icicle missiles that can impale you from above. All this I can tolerate. In my miserly ways I have to. I’ll walk to work to save a few bucks and so the tribulations of winter must be endured without any griping. The cold, however, is something to loath. That bitter, bone gripping cold that freezes the spit in your mouth, causes the moister of your breath to create crystals in your beard and forces one to layer themselves in enough clothing speckle to enter another boxing weight-class. So in the winter up goes the heat to maximum and on go the extra sheets. Out come the sweaters and long underwear and down goes the tea, coffee, hot chocolate, hot cider, hot anything!

In my worldly travels I had thought I had packed along with me the sufferance of the Canadian winter. Whereas fellow travelers would moan over the frigid Irish night or the West Coast American would make innocuous comparisons to the Arctic when engaging in a chilly Halifax early morning walk along the ocean boardwalk I would laugh it off and usually offer a variation of “This isn’t cold. Real cold is Southern Ontario in February!” Even as early as this passing November I was uttering such statements while unbeknownst to me the icy hands of the Japan winter were lurking ever forward! And here I sit now, hand shivering over the keys as I try to type faster to warm them, taking it all back. Real cold, my friends, is waking up in the middle of the night to use the facilities in your un-insolated, unheated, polar ice cap of an apartment to find yourself nearly sticking to your toilet seat. Since mid-December the climate in my small dwelling has went from pleasantly cool to what I imagine the interior of an igloo to be like. This is the same for my classes until I crank the heat. The kids complain of how hot it is. I shiver and tell them to sweat it out! Back home my upgrade model electric heater is sure to die as pitiful a death as the one before it but until then it will be worked and worked hard! I practically sit on top of the thing now. The mornings are the worst. The heater remains unplugged when I am asleep as I have visions of fires and burn victims and freak incidents involving electric heater spontaneous combustion. I cover myself up in my sheets until every inch of me is unexposed to the conditions outside of them. The night comes on and the cold attacks and by morning usually a part of me has managed to test it’s will over night and as a result has become a block of ice. On goes the kettle and down goes the tea. Lots of it. Scalding hot tea in the morning melts away the frost on the innards. Then I step outside and find it is actually warmer there then it was inside. Maybe I should set up a tent in the parking lot.

I know…I know…I complained about the heat in the summer and hear I am complaining about the cold in the winter like some grumpy old man on a park bench. Trust me, both of these climate opposites reach for the extremes of their punishment here. True, it’s not Antarctica but it sure as hell feels that way at 9am when you awake and the first thing you see is the mist of your own breath. I never thought I’d be longing for the Canadian winter but here I am in the red glow of my little heater wishing for just that. I do feel I could adjust here if I were to stay longer and I might even be able to live in colder spots but I think, right now, the thought of a warm place to come home to instead of the meat-cooler I live in now has become a temptress to my soul. I willingly walk into her arms in a few, short weeks. Embrace me and carry me down!