I AM A SNOW MAN

The weather and snow here in New York have definitely turned me into even more of a YouTube connoisseur than usual, and this week it’s brought me to a new comedian I am thoroughly enjoying. It’s Australian comedian Sam Campbell who’s, delightfully, popping up across various UK panel shows. I find it hard not to root for a true weirdo (complimentary), especially when they lean into it rather than away from it. Couple that with him asking Greg Davies a riddle and rising to what seems like only half-mock rage when it lies unanswered, and I quickly consider him of a similar mind.

The comments above, though, I don’t want to be misconstrued as a hate of the weather that’s kept me inside. After all, it’s somewhere I love. As long as I am in control of when I enter and exit the winterscape, I’m a fan.

If you’ve listened to my stand-up special or we’ve hit dead air talking through Hinge, you’re probably aware that I am a dyed-in-the-wool winter person. My bones, like a cheap white wine, simply demand to be chilled. “Even now?” you might ask, seeing as it’s been well below freezing up and down the eastern seaboard for the last week or two. To which I respond: yes, I stand by my man Jack Frost. When operating the magic global thermostat that I, as a Jew, get to use once a year to punish a city I find immoral, I might not dial it down quite this low, but I’d get close. 

Even at these frosty depths that hover around a dozen degrees Fahrenheit come dusk, I will still take too cold over too hot any day of the year. “Oh, real considerate,” you’re thinking, “talking about loving freezing temperatures when all of our ancestors almost perished in an Ice Age?” Look, I’m sorry to our cavemamas and cavepapas, and I feel bad that they got trapped in a perfectly rectangular block of ice, where they’ll be stuck forever unless they’re defrosted and enroll in a California high school for movie purposes. Oh brother, and… Cowabunga!

I am fully aware that some of this is likely genetics. Maybe not some deep, allele-contained fear of the great Yellow Orb, but just that my body meshes with humidity about as peacefully as a slug’s body with salt. Being of thoroughly Scotch-Irish ancestry by blood, I’m meant to be knee deep in peat, harvesting tubers by day and being haunted by will-o-the-wisps by night. I was not raised Scotch-Irish, thanks to the wonder of adoption, so I apologize for the inaccuracy and possible cultural insensitivity.

It’s not that I don’t feel the cold, but that it’s A: more easily defended against and B: a much more dignified form of suffering. When it gets cold, you can always stack layers and further enrobe yourself in the sheddings of late, great geese until you find an equilibrium. When it’s punishingly hot? You are medically limited in the layers you can shed while remaining skinned. 

Now if I could strip down to a simple skeleton? I do think the sun would feel nice on my femurs. As it is, I’m stuck exposing what is a swamp-man’s midriff. Unpleasant enough in ideal conditions, much less when the heat’s brought it the rough appearance of a piece of tofu fetched from day-old miso soup. Media suggests that some people sweat in a way that’s sexy. I don’t know if this has to do with chemical composition, diet, or simply what slopes of the body it’s beading down, but I have yet to ever perspire in a manner that would sell anyone Gatorade.

Which is why, I think, the suffering that comes with cold is a much classier, admirable affair. Bundling up, shivering, expiring with a look of final determination in a snowbank? This oozes character and struggle. Meanwhile, to die of overwhelming heat? They find you like a dead lizard on a driveway, tongue covered in sand with your ass sticking out of a shredded loincloth. It’s your lowest moment. It’s the extreme weather equivalent of popping a ventricle straining on the toilet. 

The aforementioned frozen warrior? Straight to the museum, with a placard that mentions bravery. Don’t believe me? Try forgetting identical food in the freezer and in the pantry. That freezer-burned Ben & Jerry’s is lamented, in hand, with a thought of “I’m so sorry I failed you.” A potato that fell behind the pasta boxes? That’s getting power-washed out without eye contact when possible.

You might be thinking, “Wow. This guy thinks about death a lot.” Which, yes. Perhaps I memento a little too much mori. These same sentiments, though, I also feel while fully alive, experiencing hot versus cold weather. When Mother Nature doles out cold, it feels like a cruel, but deserved trial. A test of my mettle. The trees don’t love it either, so it feels like a borderline bonding experience. A sort of atmospheric hazing.

Heat, on the other hand, feels highly sadistic. It carries no feeling of purpose or character-building. It’s the punishment bestowed on bugs by an unsupervised, possibly sociopathic child. It’s the dynamic of a planet that truly and deeply wants me dead. I’m running from patch of shade to patch of shade, cowering beneath bushes and trees like a small rodent escaping a hawk whose eyes fire melanomas.

Now, of course, the perfect situation is the in-between provided by fall and spring. Two seasons that humans deeply embrace, as evidenced by the amount of stock photos that feature both. Unfortunately, thanks to us taking a ball peen hammer to the knees of the planet we live on, I don’t think we get either anymore. It’s frost or fire forevermore, and we each must choose our side. I’ve decided, when the fields go bare, I will retreat to the mountains, not the sea.