Weather or not

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.

Well this time it's snow, and the US of A is getting hit hard.

Facebook has become a cesspool of complaining and whining about poor weather mixed in with jubilance and happiness over school cancellings. All people are talking about is the weather. A bunch of small talk. All whining one way or the other.

I love shitty weather.

Why? I don't know. I've just learned to embrace it. I live in Illinois, and I have grown up with this crap. I've come to realize this: YOU CAN'T DO SHIT ABOUT THE WEATHER EXCEPT MOVE.

So while you forget every year that snow happens and then turns into miserable sludge that you have to walk home from school through every day for four years even though it's cold and you could only find one glove this morning, I have learned that weather is a beast that will always be there, and it's one that mankind has to brave, run from, or die.

This Monday, the snow started. It came down like ice pellets. I walked from my Physics class through the crap as it started to fall, and it felt like sand to walking. It was just gross, miserable, shitty weather. And I loved it.

In general I've learned to laugh at things that suck, and weather does not escape this thought. It's just hilarious how bad the weather was. It was cold. It was raining. It was snowing. It was on the ground. It made your feet cold. I forgot a scarf. My ears were fucking freezing. There was no reason to be outside in this weather. It was awful. It was like the city of Champaign was vomiting on me, and here I was, walking through it to get to my next class. I had to smile. I had to chuckle.

Call it maniacal, but bad weather makes me giggle.

I guess it's because I see it as a low point. Because, with anything in life, if you don't see the low's, you won't appreciate the high's. Here in the midwest, we see the low points of mother nature plenty. That's why we go to California for vacation. The weather is fantastic, and we love it. Then we come back home. Daniel Tosh, a funny dude, once made fun of a person he made up for the purpose of mocking because they "loved seasons too much" to live in California. Tosh's punchline was this: "I love seasons, too. That's why I live in a place that skips the shitty ones."

That has some validity to it, but I don't think it's very sound (Philosophy!). I live in Illinois. We have tornadoes, we have blizzards, we have flash floods, we have triple digit days, we have humidity that you can swallow. But we also have beautiful days. And on those days, I can't get enough of the world. On those days you just go outside and frolic. You win the day, because there is so much time spent in shitty weather, that you really appreciate the hell out of a nice day.

And so I bask in the horrible, miserable, cold, life-threatening weather we're experiencing right now. Weather like this week's can just piss you off. It can prevent you from cracking a smile because you can't stop thinking of your friend in New Orleans who is complaining because it dipped into the fifties today while you're dealing with God's vomit outside. I urge you to relish it. Weather only gets this bad every once in a while, and regardless of the lack of comfort, if you live this weather, you'll enjoy living the nice days. The ones that say they're coming around in merely a couple of months. And with that they say rain joins in, but I miss rain. I miss real, warm rain. The smell of it, the random uprooting of worms, the grossness you feel once you go back inside. I miss it all.

I'll take whatever weather on any day, as long as I get to see the next one.

--Eliot Sill

PS- It's sunny outside,  I can see the blue sky, and the snow is melting. That's what I call a snow-day.