I am typing (my 100^th post!) in gloves. I am letting my hands recover from the cold. They feel like they’ve been holding dry ice for a couple of seconds—literally burned by the cold.

When I was a kid, I was the kind that would hang out in the door wells during recess in the winter. The recess aids, Mrs. Pemperton (whom the students spitefully called Mrs. “Temperton”) specifically, would come and pull me from my safe haven of extra warm, and scoot me back into the cold. I’m still not sure why they made the rule about not hanging out in the door wells. I wasn’t doing any harm… besides maybe a pagan indoor dance or something (not really. I was probably reading a book). 

Anyways. Whenever Mrs. Pemperton escorted me back to the playground, she always added advice to her rebuke. 

15 years later, I am here to debunk this childhood myth, like the ones parents tell you about your bread crust being good for you, etc etc. I can now attest that there are some colds that body heat just cannot compete with. That was the cold of this morning. I know this because I was walking very briskly today and that still didn’t stop my boogers from turning into icicles and my ears becoming hard enough that you could chisel them from the side of my head like a sculpture. That didn’t stop the furious pinking of my cheeks—in fact, it probably only augmented it.(I’ve taken my gloves off now, in case you were wondering) Walking briskly did little, in fact, it was so cold this morning that my joints started to freeze up as I was ascending the RB stairs, and my brisk walk turned more to the pace of a dying praying mantis.

I’m the kind of person who hates waking up in the morning, not because of the early hour, but because I hate getting out of my igloo of blankets, my carefully constructed heat dome of happiness. But I’d gladly wake up early to beat the dancer kids to the parking spaces outside the RB, if only to stay a little bit warmer-longer on my morning walk to campus.

*Ten Blogger Points if you catch the literary reference in my title.