Stupid Kid Stuff and Stupid Adult As Well

Saw a cool “It Happened THEN” from NOAA's website, the great Cold Friday of 1810 that happened on this day. A cold front, a mean one, had come through and froze a bunch of people who weren't prepared for it. 

 

 

 

The coldest “cold” I've ever experienced was back woods Maine in the Carrabassett valley by Mt Sugarloaf. We all had joined up on one of those weekend bus skiing trips, my first one and it was a chance to party and try my luck on a pair of skis.

At the time then, my winter coat was a Navy Pea coat. It was 100% wool and fairly warm and cool looking...for Southern New England. Down here, you don't often get negative numbers on the thermometer and if you do, there's always a place to go inside within minutes.

So the bus makes it to the codos by Sugarloaf around 11PM, we all pile out as sitting in it for five hours was long enough. As we stretch, one of the local teens who works the ski resort starts to unload the suitcases and equipment from the side bottom of the bus into a nice pile.

As I stood there, waiting for him to grab my bag out, I noticed how different the air smelled, waaaay to antiseptic. There was that typical “clean” winter air smell but it was different to me this time. In a few more minutes more, I noticed I was shivering.

I turned to Tom, the guy I was working with at Equity Concepts, a mortgage company and said,

“Tom....I'm fucking freezin!” I was starting to shake even more now...and there was no wind at all, just perfectly still air. I was shocked at how quick it had happened.

The teen unloading the bus hears me, looks up and says, “Welcome to Maine!”

By the next morning, it had warmed up and not as cold. I was more worried about the gashes on my forehead from falling down so much as it was the first time I skied in my life. The guy they have at the bottom of the slope, managing the chair lift, looked like Wilfred Brimley with a pair of binoculars they used on the Apollo missions around his neck. When I trudged up to the chair lift, bleeding, he gives some advice.

“I was watching you come down, when you fall, don't fall forward on your face...fall backwards”

Thanks! It's a bit late now. I didn't know you could control a fall as you slide down a mountain. I had fallen 33 times, I know, I counted.

**

Another time I played with hypothermia was when I was about 12. Since we were city kids we hung out at a strip mall not too far from our houses. That day in December, Jim and I were riding our bikes in and out of the parked cars, just being kids who were good at that sort of thing and never did get run over by the other traffic.

It was cold but nothing I couldn't handle, so I thought. I had on those old corduroy winter jackets, now looking back on it, they did very little to keep you warm anyways and I wore no gloves. It was a overcast winter afternoon and not unlike a lot of others I knew.

After a couple of hours out there, annoying the drivers in the parking lot, I felt the insides of my wrists starting to sting. Well, that's not new, I've felt that before. Just ignore it. I wasn't about to go home because “I was cold” and seem like a big pussy to the other 12 year olds there.

That sting got worse..and worse. I put my hands inside of my armpits inside the jacket but that required unzipping it to do so, so I got cold further overall. I did that back and forth as long as I could stand having my jacket open a bit.

Then a glorious moment came...the sting went away! Wow, that's cool! We probably stayed there another 30 minutes and then broke up to go home.

I get in and take off the jacket and for some reason I notice the insides of my wrists. The skin is grey...and I mean GREY. Dead skin grey. My Mom notices me looking at it and comes over and sees it too, then feels it.

“Get that under cold water! Now!” she yells

I do that and that sting came right back except it felt like molten lead. After a while, the blood found it's way back in and the pink color had returned to the skin. No lasting damage at all.

I've told others of this and they said, “That wasn't frost bite, if it had been, there be dead skin rotting off you there in thick layers...that was frost NIP you had.”

“Nip? That's all? Felt like hell I can tell you.

**

I guess we were 12 again, later on in that same winter. Think I'd learn? Noooo! There had been a decent snowstorm and Jim and I got it into our heads to go to Slater Park to see what it looked like there after. As with most big storms here, they pull in that Canadian air behind them and it's teen cold but not that single digit stuff..most times.

I think we were on some fantasy trip, we were going to be like trekkers, going across the Yukon on foot. Out in the wild woods where the storm had to have been worse! It was also a bit of a challenge, who would wuss out first and want to go home.

It was amazing to me to see it though. Huge fields layered in that snow. The trees cracking as the wind whipped them. The sap froze in them and you could hear that CRACK as they bent. We tramped around for a couple of hours, just looking at it all. I can remember seeing a huge swath of snow being blow up by the wind, rising into air before it showered us. Cool!

By the time we got onto the middle of pond, we both were getting cold. We would do that you know, go out onto the ice and then stomp it to see if it would crack. There was no danger of drowning as the depth never was more than four feet deep there. After “testing” the ice, which was thickly solid, we both looked at one another with, “You done? I am..bet you are too.”

So we trudge back and that was the worst. We had to face that north west wind that wouldn't relent and I could feel that shiver coming one. We were not miles and miles from home at all, just on the edge of that forest that begins on the Massachusetts border, but you trudge through a foot of snow and it does slow you down.

We make it to Newport Ave and I tell Jim, “I'm going into that Newport Creamery, to warm up!” He agrees and we both go in, snow dusted and looking cold and stiff.

We stand there in the reception area and a waitress asked if we wanted a table. “Noooo, we just want to stand there and warm up.”

“Where were you? How long were you out for? She asks.

“The park, out on the ice, the woods...couple of hours.”

The manager happened to be walking by and hears this.

“Out in the woods? Out on the ice? Why?” he asks

“We wanted to see what it would be like after a snowstorm, how bad it was out there.” I tell him.

He rolls his eyes like any adult or parent would then tells us to sit at the counter and gives us free hot chocolate.

Today...you wouldn't see me forty feet from my car if I was in that park after a storm. I would gladly wuss out if it's that bad and can cowardly run back to my car to warm up.

 

Covid 'n' Lepers

 

 

I first learned of turning positive after being prompted to call Mike L upstairs around 5:30 in the afternoon. “Yeah, umm..Ron, you tested positive...you can't stay here.” I work in healthcare and if you are carrying the virus, you become persona non grata very quick. I could not stick around others who are on death's door for other medical reasons. They didn't need my viruses to usher them through the door of Eternal Peace. At that moment of the phone call, I had felt fine, just great.

I didn't have any of the usual symptoms and for two days straight I began to wonder if I was a false positive or had a very mild case. On the third day things changed. I began to have those tell tale body aches that have always signaled to me something was up. “Well, if this is all it is, I'm lucky,” I thought. That night, I awoke around 3AM with a coughing fit that was startling even to me. Why even to me? Because I've smoked like a chimney for decades. Yeah, I know, I should quit and I have before. But the this cough I was having was different this time. It wouldn't stop.

I sat on the edge of the bed and coughed non stop for 60 to 90 seconds straight. That doesn't sound like a long time but most people, even when sick, cough for a few seconds, then stop. I didn't. After three cycles of coughing like that, it stopped and I sat there sucking in air as fast as I could. It was then I was hit with a memory from 17 years ago.

My brother had cystic fibrosis and I remember seeing him, with both hands on the bathroom sink, coughing as long as this to hack out the pus and blood. Once he threw that mess into the sink, he'd stand there for a good minute, sucking in air as fast as he could. I thought that peculiar as I had never seen him breathe air in so fast before. I never asked about it for months till curiosity got me one day to ask.

He told me, “When I cough like that, I'm not getting 'air' and when it all stops, I breathe like hell to get it.”

I felt that at 3AM that night. You greedily suck in air like there isn't enough on the planet to satisfy you.

There was another thing I felt as that happened. Panic. Most times I've felt panic was in my gut. I've felt it as I locked up the brakes on 95 because some sleepless truck driver decided to cut in front of me w/o looking and I tried like hell not to slide under his trailer. THAT kind of panic really emanates from your gut, and boy, do you feel it. What I felt this time, was dead center of my chest. It felt like my heart, and all those important vessels that entwine your lungs were sending out SOS messages. A ball of panic right there. “WARNING!! Where's the oxygen????!!!” I now know what my brother felt and probably what people feel when they drown, incredible panic in your chest.

I had bouts of this for about three days till my immune system figured out a way to beat covid's ass. Then all was fine. I could chuck that into my “Things I Didn't Want to Have in My Bucket List but Get to Experience Anyway.”

*****

I found out what it means to be a leper too, in a small way because of covid. Weeks later, I had stopped off at my favorite Quickie Mart run by those Jordanians when I realized I was still wearing all that PPE on my head from work. They guy behind the counter mentioned it and I said, “Oh dammit, I wear this stuff all day long and I forget it's even on my head.” I handed him my money and nonchalantly say to him, “Ah, it doesn't matter anyway, I already had covid.”

He darts a look at me after putting the cash into the register and starts pumping gobs of hand sanitizer into his hands and rubs it in. I go on telling him what it was like to have covid then quickly realize, by reading his face, that I should shut the hell up. I then start trying to explain to him what antigens are all about and how I'm pretty much marked IMMUNE from covid here on out but no matter, I was a filthy disgusting leper to him.

I went to a different Quickie Mart for a week after to avoid any embarrassment and probably to the relief of that guy too.

So, I have had covid naturally and my body has developed a defense against it. I also have had the first series of the covid vaccination and that to my body is a booster shot. My body has been in the gym working out against covid and is probably all pumped up to slam down any covid that dares to pokes it's nose around the corner at me.

You do not need to avoid me now. I'm clear. I do not have to wave a bell and yell “Unclean! Unclean!” as I walk down the street like they used to make the lepers do, by law, in Medieval Europe of old.