Hot Enough For Ya?

Do you know what’s even more annoying that people complaining about the weather? People who complain about people who complain about the weather. Over the past few days, since Toronto started its record-breaking heatwave, the number of people online and in mainstream media puffing out their chests, pointing to their own sweat-free foreheads and telling people to “enjoy the glorious weather” has increased exponentially. And to those people I say – Go Fuck Yourself.

Listen, I get that some people dig the hot weather. Good for you. You get on out there and enjoy it.

But some of us don’t like the hot weather. It makes us physically and emotionally sick. I don’t complain about it all that much, I just avoid it as much as I can.

Sadly though, some of the critics don’t get their own hypocrisy. The old “just you wait until winter” threat gets dragged out, along with their own gripes about the cold weather. These same folks who enjoy the sun seem to think it’s perfectly alright to gripe about the cold, but anyone who complains about the heat is a whiny baby.

I grew up in a land of many beaches, and spent my childhood in the sun. Of course, there was still some ozone then, and we hadn’t really started seeing the effects of global warming, and where I lived seldom got brutally hot. Even so, after a day spent on the beach when I was 12 playing frisbee, and a sunburn that became one huge blister (and subsequent advice from a doctor to spend my adult years keeping track of moles on my back, since I had just set myself up for some potentially fatal melanoma) I found myself avoiding the sun. Goths don’t tan, and puberty changed my hormones so that where once I became brown as a coconut, I now turn lobster red in any little bit of sun exposure, so it just seemed like a sensible thing to avoid it all.

I moved to Toronto in 1987, but I’ve never ever been able to acclimatize to Toronto’s hot, humid summers. I tried. I lived in places without air conditioning until about 5 years ago. And of the 12 years we lived in our last place, the first 5 years or so was without air-conditioning at all – and this with the bedrooms on the uninsulated 3rd floor attic, where on a 30’C day, the temperature was often 40’C or more, before humidity.

But now, I won’t ever live in another place that doesn’t have central AC. I just can’t deal with the heat.

The fact is that I’d rather a cold winter day than a hot summer day any time. That long cold winter we just experienced? Loved it. The cool wet spring? Awesome.

The difference is, I guess, that I make a point of not complaining about the winter weather.  Unless I get caught in the freezing rain and pointy triangle-shaped bits of ice are hitting my eyes, I don’t complain about the cold. I have a lovely coat and warm gloves and fabulous boots. The only bad thing about winter is the people who don’t shovel their sidewalks. The rest of it is quite enjoyable. (And I should point out that, as a dog owner, I’m out in the world for an hour or so each day at minimum – except in the summer where the dog hates the heat as much as I do.)

In any case, I look at it like this – I don’t complain about the winter weather. I listen to all the sun-lovers whining about having to wear a scarf, or how depressing the weather is. I put up with the bitching and complaining. I do so without complaint because I know that, come summer, I’m going to be the one bitching about the heat.

So all you people who feel superior because you have a better tolerance for the sun than the rest of us – kindly shut your pieholes. We live in the great white north after all. Hot weather is not the norm here. And while I have no argument with heat-lovers enjoying a heatwave, there’s really no need to bitch about the rest of us who are having a hard time dealing with it. Because come January, when the tables are turned and you start whining about the cold, you’re likely to find yourself face down in a snowbank.