Op-Ed
A Mexican in Wintertime
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Tequila Sunrise
February 8, 2007 - 1:22amI had never seen snow until I first came to Ithaca three (too short) years ago. Thus, when fellow columnist Justin Weitz points out that, “One of the worst things about Sun columns is when they say that it’s cold in Ithaca,” he might be forgetting that some of us do, in fact, come from the southern latitudes. For some of us, the cold is as new and important as American Cheese, slugger.
My hometown’s weather consists of a placid, perpetual spring. This minus-27 weather in Ithaca, while no longer brand-spanking-new to me, is still at that stage where, halfway through my daily trek on the tundra, I still stop and wheeze, “Really?”
I’d never seen snow and never in my life had experienced anything colder than the high forties before I came to Ithaca. Three-and-a-half years later, however, I still refuse to wear a hat, scarf or gloves, even in the most frigid of temperatures. Mind over matter, I say. That, and I usually have to sprint the last few dozen feet to get inside before I frickin’ die.
I will confess that I am as scared of snow as Britney is of panties. That is, I don’t want to go anywhere near it. It is cold, white, dead and unnatural. The only time I’m OK with something frozen is when I put ice cubes in my scotch. I don’t mind the cold, yet refuse to interact on a personal level with snow or ice or any of their related by-products.
A few days ago, I was finally convinced to shake my phobia and go out and play in the snow with some friends. We were to build snowmen, get into snowball fights, make snow angels, go sledding, get into icicle fights and do all that other fun stuff that one does while succumbing slowly to hypothermia. I gave in because they are nice people, they truly believed that this snow-a-thon would be off the hook, and they all looked really eager to, as it were, pop my snow cherry.
It was at this point that I realized that I would, in all likelihood, come into direct contact with this most insidious of evils: the fiendish Snow. I would fall on it, have it thrown at me, dumped on my head and have it run down my pants. I thus came to the conclusion that it was of crucial importance that I hermetically seal myself as much as possible.
So I put on seven pairs of socks, some of which stretched and some of which tore. Then came the first dilemma. I felt that I needed to wear two pairs of pants. Easy enough. But then I started wondering. Could I make do with only one belt? Did I need two belts? How do I wear two belts, anyways? One over the other? One under the other? One criss-crossing the other? I did get over my bandido phase many years ago. Then I had to make sure that I remembered that I now had two zippers and that I shouldn’t start going as soon as one of them was down.
I then donned an undershirt, a shirt, a sweater and a shell-jacket, and was rendered completely immobile. This presented a problem, since I had yet to put on my boots. My boots, of course, also refused to fit in over the aforementioned seven pairs of socks. So I tried to jump up and down, which made everything run up and created — wouldn’t you know it — a wedgie. This wedgie, of course, happily intensified itself when it realized that it was protected behind an almost impenetrable wall of several strips of cloth. There were too many layers between my hand and my wedgie. So I had to resort to this little shimmy, shaking back and forth like an epileptic on speed, with my hand behind my butt, and it was at this precise moment that my roommate chose to walk in. With his girlfriend. Of course.
With my face red, not only from the cold but also thanks to my stammering embarrassment, I walked out into the frigid night, stubbornly refusing to wear a hat, scarf and gloves yet carrying them in case I’d need them as a last resort. As I walked over to our snowball-fight arena, I realized with a deep sigh that perhaps it was finally time to turn to this, the last resort. I said “Mind over matter,” but I do mind, and it does matter. My mind was not strong enough for this, especially since I had spent all semester killing it with beer. Defeated, I pulled on my gloves, which I first put on the wrong hands. Then came the hat, a ridiculous multicolored striped aberration that was punctuated by a fluffy bob on top. This bob, of course, accomplishes nothing except making my head look like a quartered poodle. Last came the scarf and I had no idea how to put it on. Every fold and knot I made I felt was a mistake. It kept blowing away. It kept choking me. I just couldn’t get it right. Moreover, I didn’t even know what right was. I realized that I had no idea what a scarf on my neck was supposed to look like. How did you wear it? Was there a guy way of wearing it as opposed to a girl way of wearing it? Kind of like crossing one’s legs? I finally ended up tying it in a knot and giving up. I must have looked like a five-year-old who dressed himself in the dark.
I finally came upon the snowball-fight arena and looked upon it. Where others saw a winter wonderland teeming with opportunity for snow sports, I saw a barren wasteland with dead trees and white mud. At this point, I realized that I should have worn a third pair of pants. A cold rivulet of snow ran up my boot and soaked my toes, even through all the socks.
When is it summer again?
Carlos Maycotte is The Sun’s Associate Editor. He can be contacted at cam98@cornell.edu. Tequila Sunrise appears Thursdays.