Around this time last year, I was on the beach in Cape Town, South Africa. I actually got a tan, which, given my freckled Irish skin, is pretty miraculous.
Now I'm wading through icy slush to class. Not cool, man, not cool.
As you might be able to guess, I am not a huge fan of winter. I like snow only the first night, before it gets dirty, and only if I don't have to go outside in it. I've never learned to ski or snowboard. I'm not even a fan of curling up in front of a fire, because the smoke gets in my eyes.
I'm not much of an outdoors person in any season, I'll admit, but freezing cold temperatures do nothing to entice me to voluntarily leave home. I told one of my roommates I wasn't leaving our house until April except for class, work and food.
Some of my friends love winter. They have their snow boots and their ski jackets and turn into four-year-olds whenever it snows. I don't get it.
The majority of my wardrobe consists of short-sleeved shirts, which I refuse to let go of when winter rolls around. I simply wear them under sweaters.
While I'm fully aware we've had a fairly mild winter in Virginia this year, that doesn't mean I'm willing to call a truce. During the last snow storm, I made the incredibly intelligent decision to wear white pants to class. To be fair, I had to work later and look semi-professional, so there was a method to my madness.
Meanwhile, there's construction going on across the street from my house. Snow, red mud and white pants are not a good life decision. Let's just say I had to bleach my pants twice to get the stains out of the bottom hems and wore black pants to work that day.
Perhaps snow here at the University is worse. I still hold out hope that my classes will be cancelled -- you'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. I had an exam Wednesday morning that I probably could have been more prepared for, and I kept praying to the snow gods that my professor would e-mail the exam and make it a take-home. Then again, I wasn't so much intimidated by the test as I was by the prospect of trudging through the snow to class.
Snow also ruins your other plans. This week I've had to rethink a trip to the grocery store and cancelled a meeting. When was the last time you heard of a meeting getting cancelled because it was too nice outside? Come to think of it, we should have meetings when it's cold and snowing and cancel them when it's nice outside so we can enjoy the weather.
Even when I was little I was a summer girl. I practically lived at the pool. Despite my current pale complexion, I always had a tan back then. My brother, our next-door neighbors and I would spend hours running back and forth between our backyards, having watermelon-seed spiting contests and catching lightning bugs while our parents looked on from the porch where they were having serious, grown-up conversations and drinking serious, grown-up iced sun tea.
Give me summer year-round. Give me pool noodles and ice cream and flip-flops. I love staying up until nine even when I'm exhausted, if only because it is still light outside. I even love those harsh summer thunderstorms when lightning makes cool patterns on the clouds and it's warm enough to go puddle-jumping afterwards.
I know there are some of people out there who think I would get bored by long, sunny days with green trees and no school, and to them I say: You are stupid.
Okay, so maybe I'm not so mature in my defense of summer. Summer is the time of the year when everyone acts like a kid again because there's actually enough daylight to play outside after your parents get off of work. Everyone gets his or her daily quota of Vitamin D and is happier. My parents, also summer people, always have a Fourth of July party with our closest friends, and you would not believe how excited people twice my age get about fireworks. Plus, nothing's better than a char-grilled hamburger and an iced tea, the official meal of summer.
So, if you don't mind, let's skip this whole winter and spring thing and head straight for summer. I'll see you on the beach. I'll be the one reading a trashy novel, sipping a cold one and hiding my white skin under a very large umbrella.
Laura's column runs weekly alternating Thursdays and Fridays. She can be reached at lsisk@cavalierdaily.com.
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