TRUE! -- chilly, very, very dreadfully chilly I had
been and am; but why WILL you say that I am cold?
The
temperature had frozen my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of frostbite acute. I shivered from icy winds in Heaven and on Earth.
I shivered because it was cold as
Hell. How then am I chilly?
Hearken!
And observe how frigidly, how frostily, I can tell you the whole story.
It is
impossible to say how the icicles first entered my brain, but, once conceived,
they haunted me day and night. Warmth,
there was none. Defrosting, there was
none. I loved Old Man Winter. He had never wronged me, even in 1978. He had never given me insulation. For his snow, I had no desire.
I
think it was the eye of his blizzard! Yes, it was this! The eye of his blizzard resembled that of a
vulture ice sculpture -- a pale grayish eye with a snowy film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold,
and so by falling subzero degrees, very gradually, I made up my frozen mind to
take the flakes of Old Man Winter, and thus rid myself of the Blizzard Eye
forever.
Now
this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have
seen me. You should have seen how coldly
I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what numbness of
circulation, I went to work!
I was
never kinder to Old Man Winter than during the whole week before I thought
about killing him but was too frikkin' frostbitten to do it.
The
weathermen arrived at the door, the forecasters I had berated and belittled in
pervious blogs. I smiled -- for what had
I to fear but another storm on the radar?
I bade the meteorologists welcome.
The shriek they had heard so early this morning was my own from stepping
outside to make sure my car started. I
lied and told them Old Man Winter was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them predict -- predict well!
I led
them at length to the radar maps. I
showed them Old Man Winter's snowmen, secure and undisturbed in the morning
air. In the enthusiasm of my
cold-crippled state, I brought pre-made snowballs into the room and desired
them here to stick out their mittened hands, while I, in the wild audacity of
my perfect triumph, placed my own gloved hand around a snowball. Inside that very snowball reposed the
thermometer stolen from the frozen corpse that was Old Man Winter.
The
weather people were satisfied. My
frostbite had convinced them. I was
singularly frozen to the core. They
drank hot cocoa and chatted about the last time we all saw Old Man Winter, and
I answered cheerily.
But
ere long I felt myself getting paler and colder and wished them gone. My nose froze and I fancied a stinging from
the lobes of my ears. But still they
chatted. The stinging became more
distinct; I iced over more freely and though got rid of all feeling, it
continued to gain definitiveness - until at length I found the seasonal
temperature was NOT within my cold body.
No
doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I froze more fluently, and wheezed with a
heightened voice. Yet the temperature decreased -- and what could I do? There was a low, dull, cracking sound, much
such a sound as the ice floe makes when separating from winter's river. I gasped for breath, yet the forecasters
heard it not. I froze more quickly, more
vehemently, but the temperature steadily decreased.
I
arose and argued about mittens versus gloves and fleece versus wool, all in a
high key and with violent but ice-stiffened gesticulations; yet the cracking
noise increased. Why WOULD they not be
gone? I skated across the floor to and
fro with sharpened blades, as if excited to fury by the observations of these
forecasting experts, but the noise steadily increased.
O
Frosty! What COULD I do? I froze -- I raved -- I swore (like THAT'S
unusual)! I swung the snowball which was
still in my glove. The noise grew louder
-- louder -- LOUDER! And still the weather professionals chatted
pleasantly.
Was
it possible they heard not? No -- no --
they heard. They suspected! They KNEW! They were making a mockery of my frostbite!
This
I thought - and this I think.
But
anything was better than this agony!
Anything was more tolerable than having meteorologists in my house. I could bear those hypocritical forecasts no
longer! I felt that I must freeze or
die!
And
now -- again -- hark! Louder! Louder!
LOUDER!
"Villains!" I coughed, for my throat was iced hoarse,
"Dissemble no more! I admit the
deed! Here, take this snowball! Throw it!
Melt it! Tear it open… Here,
HERE!
The
horrid sound is the dropping of the temperature from THIS HIDEOUS
THERMOMETER!!!!!
