JOHN MCLOONE

I might go outside this week. It seems like it’s getting back to being my kind of winter.

El Niño is my friend. The weather pattern sweeps warmer waters our way, making winter more tolerable. That’s far from a scientific explanation. I could point to maps with vortexes and arrows and swirly things, but to dumb it down to my level, it means we won’t be as miserable as we were last winter and the winter before that and the winter before that.

I know I certainly wasn’t built for this northern climate, though as a cruel joke, I’m kind of built like a snowman. I’ve never been much for winter sports. I hung up my skates at a young age. In those days, black skates were for boys and white skates were for girls. I happened to have four older sisters, so my dad tried to get me to wear white ones. I put up a fuss, and he took shoe polish to them. They were then a light shade of blue, and I didn’t need to get laughed off the ice twice. Plus, the warming house wasn’t really warm. It was just not quite as cold and windy.

I did ski for a stretch in my younger days and maybe even enjoyed it, but I never quite got the hang of it. 

Heck, I even owned a snowmobile for a stretch. I don’t remember the specifics of acquiring it. It was 20 years old in the 1980s, so you can imagine this contraption. I see these machines now, and I realize that even people who love the outdoors have gone soft. I didn’t have heated hand grips or a heated seat. There was no windshield on my clunker. And every time I went over 30 mph, the spark plug would unscrew itself.

This was probably about the time in my life I realized I was built for indoor pursuits, though I’m struggling to list those I’ve perfected to date. If it means not going outside in the winter, I’ll keep working at being the best I can be at things inside for many years to come, God willing.

There’s a debate that rages across the Upper Midwest annually. There are those who prefer a monthlong Arctic blast and then an earlier spring. There are others who’d rather have just a steady winter, with snow starting early and covering the ground into spring. I say both sides are nuts, and I’ll be watching you freeze, slip or slide from my picture window.