Spring continues to tease its arrival.
It is like a difficult, fickle-minded lover—an irrational, complex being with an inability to decide what it really wants. It gives you mixed signals; first it’s hot and then it’s cold. It is flakey. It does the whole disappearing act. Spring builds up false hope only to leave once again and let you down. With its mood swings, unreliability and general lack of decency, I think spring would make a real crummy partner.
You probably think I’m being unoriginal here, whining about the weather in prosaic cliche like others have probably done before. But weather talk is a great icebreaker. It won’t get old because we live it every moment, and of course since I’m writing an opinion article this means you will have to put up with the whole “look at me and all my important thoughts” kind of self-indulgence. So here it is, understand my pain.
I’m from the tropics. This means that it is always summer, 365 days, all year round.
Hell, where I’m from, the coldest it ever gets to is 80 degrees. My foreign body is not designed to withstand the biting tundra that is Wisconsin winters. Trust me, having begun in the spring semester going from 80 degrees to what pretty much feels like -80 degrees is a ridiculously huge jump. My first steps out onto campus were of me trying to make a dramatic entrance of “hello Wiscons-“ and ended in me having my inaugural slip on this mysterious demon you guys call “black ice”.
Snow was cute, snow was beautiful and snow was fun, for the first couple of days. But when you’re hustling to class in the morning, it gets old really fast.
A couple of weeks ago there was a freak anomaly of some February warmth. The sun was out, the birds were chirping and the most beautiful sight of water trickled down the slopes. You noticed things more because you weren’t shivering like crazy and focused on trying to get indoors as quick as possible. It was a surreal moment. You probably shed a couple of layers and maybe even wore shorts. You could finally greet the good soil beneath your feet because the snow was all out of the way. Indeed, spring seemed to be just around the corner. Of course, fast forward a couple of days later and there’s five inches of snow all around and you’re back to trying to squeeze onto the 80, having a moment of “schadenfreude” when you’re the last person to be let onto the bus by the driver and all the rest curse and swear as they get denied. Spring is very fickle indeed.
Okay, to be fair, winter has also meant that I’ve been able to do things I would never have gotten to do back home, like have a snowball fight, walk on a frozen lake, sled down a snowy hill and watch my breath as it comes out like fog in the air. You know, all that poetic, sentimental stuff. And now I do think that I’m starting to acclimatize to the cold—definitely don’t like it, but I’m getting used to suffering through it. Now when my parents call me frantically, distraught that it’s 28 degrees out, I scoff and tell them that I pretty much go tanning in this weather.
But even though the wind hurts my face and I can never feel my toes, I do not regret my decision coming to Madison.
Do you disagree? Are Wisconsin winters pretty much the worst things that exist? Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
