Is There anything Funny About Winter?

I went into a store the other day and the guy behind the counter said, "It’s so cold out today it’s not even funny." What does that mean? By that logic if it is fifty degrees is that kinda funny? Weatherpeople don’t talk like that. "Today it should be marginally humorous with scattered hilarity, and continued wittiness into the evening. We expect and overnight low of knee slapping, sidesplitting,...tomfoolery. Tomorrow that cold front we’ve been expecting will arrive and we will be so cold, it won’t even be funny."
I frequently hear transplants from the North complaining how they miss the winters up there. I used to live in Wisconsin and I can tell you from experience that there is nothing about the winters there to miss. In fact, I hate the cold so much I refuse to eat York Peppermint Patties. I don’t want the cool sensation of freezing my butt off on some ski slope in the middle of a blizzard. I’m even afraid to open a Miller Genuine Draft lest winter suddenly engulf me. Open a beer-BAM!-Instant winter. How is that a selling point of beer anyway? If I’m stuck in an ice storm I don’t want an ice-cold beer...I want a thermos of hot chocolate and a coffee enema.
These same Yankees always whine, "I miss the contrast between the seasons." Here’s how I like to do it - live in the South, turn on the TV and say, "Look they are freezing in Buffalo, it must be winter!" I’m in shorts throwing the Frisbee. They are waist deep in snow putting chains on their tires. That’s enough contrast in seasons for me.
Another thing about these carpet-baggers that bugs me, when it does get cold down here and I am wearing a jacket, there always seem to be at least one idiot from the north walking around in a T-shirt telling me what a wimp I am for thinking it’s cold. "Man this isn’t cold. You ought to see up in Buffalo, we get three to four feet of snow a week. This isn’t cold." That’s when I throw a glass of water on him. "Oh man, you got me all wet!" I just smile and say, "You ain’t wet, wait until it starts raining here in the spring.... Then you’ll be wet."
You know, I just re-read this column and I think it’s good... So good, in fact, that it’s not even funny.

BY TOM SIMMONS AND COSTAKI ECCONOMOPOULOS