Don't wake me until spring has sprung!

      There's something wrong with me. (No, I don't need to see your list, thank you very much.) When I see photos of soaring, white capped mountains or a peaceful, frozen lake glistening in the moonlight as a white owl glides over ahead, I think, "Man, that looks cold." No thrill at nature's beauty. Instead, I feel a great appreciation for central heating.
      People always seem surprised that I enjoy summer's temperatures. "Most large people don't like summer," they'll say, right before I raise my massive arms and smack them upside their tiny heads with a two-by-four. And there are the brave, foolish ones who think they know me well enough to say things like "Fat is a good insulator so you should enjoy winter," but then they disappear and their bodies are never found so I don't hear that as much as I used to.
      I haven't always felt this way about winter. When I was a child, I can remember being happy when it snowed because then I wouldn't have to go to school. I can remember actually enjoying getting out in the snow and even throwing iceballs at my siblings or making miserable looking snowmen that never looked like those ones in the movies. Later I would discover that those perfect snowmen were built by trained sculptors, like Michelangelo. (Most people are unaware that his statue of David started out as an homage to Frosty, hence the white marble.) My snowmen always looked like they were squat mutants from Planet X, but this only made it more fun to attack them with a baseball bat as I defended the earth from their cold grasp. We owe our freedom from snowman domination today to my friend Batty.
      But as I grew older, winter began to lose its fascination, especially when I started having to drive in snow and ice to get to my various jobs, none of which ever closed due to bad weather even when the rest of the city would shut down because of six foot drifts and wild, ravaging polar bears. There were no snow days in my working world.
       Driving in winter weather always stresses me out. There I am, driving safely with my mug of hot chocolate in my right hand, my cell phone in my left hand, my breakfast muffin in my other hand, steering the car with my knees while using my toes to adjust the car stereo, and then I hit a patch of ice and spill something. And then there are those jerks in four-wheel drive trucks that zoom past me going at 600 miles per hour. See, you might not know this, but when you have four-wheel drive, you can drive at regular speeds on ice and snow. In fact, you can even drive faster because the roads are strangely deserted, and it's just you and the long white highway that for some reason dead-ends in someone’s living room. I have seen trucks fly past me so fast that they actually break the sound barrier. At least, that's what the highway patrol report later as they survey the wreckage.
      The only good thing about cold weather is that it gives people a license to eat. Let it get near freezing, and people start packing away the calories like they're about to go on an expedition to the Artic. "When it's cold, you need fuel to keep warm," they say as they stuff another burrito down their throat with a hunger that rivals that of the Donner Party. The Donner Party, by the way, was one of those social events that you didn't want to get invited to. (A friend of mind just read this and said that cannibalism simply isn't funny and that it upsets him. I agree, but I try to not let the subject eat at me. Ahem.)
      I've always thought that bears have the right idea. They eat several tons of food, then they sleep through the entire winter. They go to sleep fat and wake up thin. They never see snow at all. We could learn a lot from bears. Just ask Smokey.
      I will concede that snow is pretty, but you won't ever convince me to like it. We'll have to leave it like this: Winter just leaves me cold.

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