We Like the Four Seasons!

When you are in the grip of winter weather that seems to have made a bet with one of the other seasons that it can make you and your species go extinct with the cold while walking from the car into the grocery store, it is best to count your blessings and dwell on the many downsides of the opposite set of weather conditions on the other side of the world.

There must be many things wrong with these tropical locations that we see all the time on television.

There just must be.

I’ll bet a lot of these fine people lolling on the beach and slathering sunscreen on their skin have a strong desire deep down to be right where we are now.

I’ve never been to these tropical paradises, but I picture the stage scenery that has been wheeled out by Nature to include a pristine beach, a blue or aquamarine sea that rises gently into swells that spill onto this stretch of sand, a certain number of grass huts or shacks along the beach that house snack stands of one sort or another showing off the local delicacies, balmy ocean breezes, perhaps wooden torches at night to light the way back to the cabana, a friendly gathering of tourists and locals who all seem intoxicated by the scene into a state of unnatural pleasantness, hammocks strung between tropical looking trees, ready availability of sarsaparilla or even other beverages, a lending library of wonderful books that has made its way beach-side, the gentle calling of birds to one another in the blue sky above, and perhaps a small musical group playing the regional brew of melody, harmony, and rhythm as background.

Man.

Man, oh man.

…….Now what were we doing?

Oh, yes, we were going to compare this bleak and oppressive beach scene to the brisk, or some might even say cold, offering that the Midwest winter has presented.

Where to start?

Well, let us enumerate several things that these beachgoers have to worry about that we here are entirely free of.

I don’t imagine the fear of sharks is ever far from these lazy beach people’s minds, but I can say with complete confidence that we here are in an entirely shark-free zone.

You may close your eyes, here in this brutal and unforgiving Midwest, walk in any direction you choose, and I assure you, and our various Chambers of Commerce will assure you as well, you are in a state of complete non-danger as regards the stumbling over of a shark.

Compare this to the potential shark victims on this beach scene that I have taken some trouble to paint. The way I picture it you can hardly turn around without finding a shark taking up valuable real estate.

They are fed a steady diet in these TV shows of villains, corrupt politicians, and town misfits that are hard to know what to do with otherwise until, in a tense plot meeting, one of the scriptwriters sings out: ‘I know! Let’s feed him to the shark!”

Well, there’s quite a bit of this, since it brings what they call in Hollywood the character’s ‘narrative arc’ to a conclusion so succinctly, but some say it is overused, with The Friendly Groundskeeper from the first act, Man on Bus from the second, and Elderly Librarian from the third all being consumed right before the credits roll at the end of the hour.

This is lazy writing for one thing, but it also makes the sharks proud and lacking in motivation. They become entitled, and seem to expect An Older Lifeguard or Elegant Socialite to be thrown to them at day’s end…every day!

So that is one thing, and a definite point in favor of this godforsaken arctic wasteland that passes itself off as a reasonable place for humans to inhabit. We don’t have layabout sharks.

I have heard too that the common jellyfish washes up on these shores, and contrary to its reputation as a graceful and delicate creature, it instead takes pleasure in administering a painful sting to the bare underfoot of our unwary travelers.

As with the shark, here in these frozen stretches of no man’s land resembling the colder precincts of one of those planets formed entirely of ice, you have no need to give any thought at all to The Jellyfish Menace. You may walk barefoot to your heart’s content if you, for instance, always wanted to know what getting frostbite was like.

The Midwest is looking better and better, isn’t it?

I told you this was a valuable exercise.

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear that on this beach certain drinks of a tropical nature are served from these grass huts I speak of, nor to hear that a number of these tropical drinks have somewhere floating near the top of them a small brightly colored umbrella holding olives, baby onions, or other accompaniments.

Do you have any idea how many eyes are put out each year by the hasty imbibing of these drinks? Local optometrists are retiring in their early 40s on the volumes of patients they’re treating for umbrella-ectomies due to this condition.

There is no point in asking where One-Eyed Dave has been lately, or One-Eyed Betty. You have to specify which One-Eyed Dave or Betty you are inquiring of, there are so many.

We have no such festive beverages up here. Up here, life is earnest and life is stern and the elements and perhaps the odds are against us.

Life isn’t to be celebrated but to be endured, and if we do take a swallow of a reviving fluid from time to time it is done for the same reason that we put antifreeze into our cars: simply to keep the engine turning over.

I would imagine too that on these beaches a certain number of romances spring up between strangers.

Danger lurks in these romances. Who knows where this will all lead? This or that fellow may in a forgetful moment neglect to recall that he is already married, and accidentally commits bigamy.

This adds unneeded complexity at tax time and is generally to be avoided.

Or he may already be a bigamist by way of previous visits to this beach and is now in danger of trigamy.

There is no such danger here, in the sub-zero wasteland we call home, of romance springing up. 

When it is uncertain if we ourselves are going to make it alive to our cars, it strikes us that taking along a stranger, however charming, will only drain our rations and cause us to overuse our firewood at night.

We have slipped into rather Darwinian behavior here and there is no room for romance and perhaps not even for the continuation of the species.

Too, on that idyllic beach scene I have described, as long as I am listing the dangers, there is always the danger of poetry or folk singing breaking out, or festive native dancing.

The dancing we do here is a kind of frantic stomp from one foot to the other to see if we can bring back feeling to our extremities, and as for poetry or folk songs, we no longer have the vocabulary to participate, having reverted to mere grunts and wheezes, greatly lessening the danger of such epidemics of song.

We have as well up here no insect life, or if this continues, not much life at all among any of the ordinary species, as the poor devils have fallen from the sky with the cold and have broken like icicles upon hitting the frozen ground.

Lucky in a way, I suppose, if you look at it from a certain angle. At least they’re not cold anymore.

So you see, things could be much worse. As I said, we like the four seasons here and feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t get to participate in them to the full extent, presuming you live through them.