Hey Inventor People and Winter Sports Marketing Folks! Y'all should sit up and listen. You know how you're always yapping on about how important layers are when we're heading into the back country to ski the tundra or build snowmen or whathaveyou, and how utterly vital to those layers are the perfect technical fabrics? And you know how you've got scientific teams ever researching and improving gear for extreme cold weather activities so no one freezes to death on your watch?
Well, research no more. For I have found the penultimate extreme cold weather material from which to make every itty bitty piece of winter sports and survival gear that all of us will ever need: Teen-Aged Skin. Yep. That's right. I discovered the amazing weather-fighting properties of Teen-Aged Skin while dropping my kids off at school this morning.
See, it was stinking cold when I trundled outside to get the paper at dawn's early light today. Cold enough that icicles formed instantly on my nose hairs and inside my eyelids. Cold enough that the CO2 huffing out of my lungs as I ran back inside snow-coned in mid-air, and left a trail of CO2-balls on the ground behind me. I felt it would be cruel and unusual to have my people walk to school in conditions like that. I mean, when I thawed out enough to check the temperature, there turned out to be no degrees at all in the air. None. Zero. Zip. So naturally I bundled up like the abominable snow-mom — expecting my people to do the same, except as snow-teens — hollered that I would be giving them a ride, and then started the car.
Imagine my amazement when out came Teen 1 and Teen 2 in abso-freaking-lutely nothing more than their shirts, pants, and shoes. And backpacks, but those don't add significantly to warm-ification, so they don't count. But yeah. My Emperors, for all intents and purposes, were wearing no clothes.
I made a comment about it. But you know, you pick your battles, so I left it at that. And my dears informed me that they didn't need coats to just run from the car to the school. And they'd ride home with friends, so why would they need them then? And actually, they weren't cold, so I should stop worrying. It was fine.
Well. The cascades of motherly advice I wanted to give them but didn't right then nearly exploded my head. But these people are almost adults. I'm not going to force them. They can learn on their own, from the consequences of their own choices. And oh yeah, heh! heh! heh! They were going to learn. It was fa-reeeezing out there. And they'd be the only ones in their entire school who . . . um . . .
Yeah. Every. Single. Kid. Walking into that school. Was coat-free. With the exception of the chickiewickies who got new coats for Christmas. Other than that? Total teen-aged skin exposure to sub-arctic temperatures and nary a shiver among them. Holy freezing cow.
So my conclusion? There is something in youthful skin that wards off the chill and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with peer pressure and looking cool and having arms too weak to carry coats to and from lockers. Nope. Teen-aged skin's got special properties, folks! And someone'd better tell the extreme-weather-sports scientific community all about it. I can't right now. I'm hunkered down in a pile of comforters in front of my fireplace and I'm not done with my cocoa. Maybe my kid can do it. I'll have him walk. It's only a few thousand miles of open air.
Heh. You are so right. I don’t get it. I’m cold just looking out at the cold.