OPINION: Inanimate objects react to the snow

February 17, 2014 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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By now, we’re all used to weather reports predicting heavy snowfall.

This has happened maybe five or six times this winter, and there’s probably more to come. We know how people feel about the snow. But how do inanimate objects feel about it?

I have several pairs of shoes and several coats. One of the coats, a nice green coat, is perfect for normal winter weather, say, the 40s or 30s. I have a much heavier coat, but normally, I only wear it in extremely cold weather, in the teens or 20s.

This winter, however, is throwing my coat routine way off balance. Instead of wearing my extra-heavy coat two or three times, I’m wearing it more often than the other one. As for my third jacket, the one that’s appropriate for temperatures in the high 40s or 50s, I’m not wearing it at all.

And if this is the case for my coats, then, what of my shoes? I have two “regular” pairs of shoes, one pair of sneakers and one pair of heavy boots.

Most of the time, I rotate the two pairs of shoes and wear the sneakers on weekends. During normal winters, I only wear the heavy boots maybe four or five days, when there’s a heavy snowstorm.

But this winter is different. This winter, I’m wearing the boots, which I think of as being for abnormal weather, more often than the shoes.

I haven’t even mentioned my pants. I have two pairs of heavy corduroy pants that I usually wear two or three times for the entire winter. This winter, I find myself wearing them a lot more than that.

It’s plain to see that my regular shoes, jackets and pants are jealous of my heavy-duty clothes. They’re accustomed to being worn on a regular basis. Being inside the house most of the time, they don’t know about the constant snowstorms, and they blame me for not wearing them enough. If I’m not careful, they’ll start a revolt, and I’ll come home to find my clothes scattered all over the bedroom floor.

Also in the bedroom, there’s a small toy polar bear that we’ve had for years. Usually we don’t pay much attention to it, except when the cat decides to play with it. But now, the little polar bear is looking forward to the time when real polar bears will come to New York if this weather continues, and it’s getting ready to join them. One day, we’ll come home and the toy bear will be gone.

If you think that’s bad, you should see what’s happening elsewhere! Over in the Museum of Natural History, the mock-ups of the wooly mammoths behind glass have come to life. For maybe 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, they’ve felt out of place. Now’s their chance.

The snowstorms have awakened them, they think there’s a new Ice Age, and they’re beginning to move about in their display cases when no one’s looking. Soon, they believe, they’ll be roaming the Arctic tundra once again.

Clearly, the snowstorms are disrupting people, animals, stuffed animals, coats, shoes and everything else. It’s time to tell the weatherman.

“Enough already!” Tell the scientists to bring back global warming. Anything’s better than this!