The Exhausted Dad: Non-experts in winter preparedness
My 9-year-old daughter takes a weekly gymnastics class in an agreeably warm and comfortable facility.
It makes sense, of course, because these young athletes need to perform fantastic feats of acrobatics, and you don’t want them tangling their winter jackets on one of the uneven bars.
As far as I know, we can’t yet teleport to the gym. Instead, we travel from our house to the facility using a vehicle! We walk outside our house to the car, ride in the car, then walk from the parking lot of the facility into gym. Get this … we do it all year 'round.
My 9-year-old daughter surely knows how to read a calendar, and she surely understands the concepts of temperature and seasons. And yet, every time we’re about to leave from gymnastics, I see her at the front door wearing her short-sleeved unitard and Crocs.
Last week, the wind chill made temperatures feel like well below zero. Then it snowed.
Warmth? Protection from the frigid elements? A gymnast craves not these things.
Call me an overprotective parent, but in the wintertime, I don’t want my kids to go outside without a winter jacket. So, my daughter and I repeat the same conversation over and over again.
Her: “I don’t need a coat! We’re going straight to the car, then straight into the gym!”
Me: “Yes, but what if we slide off the road and into a ditch and we are sitting in the cold for hours waiting for rescue?”
While I admit we live in a well-populated town and travel almost exclusively on well-populated roadways, the “stuck in the ditch” example usually works enough that she won’t continue to argue with me.
Her eyes will roll, certainly. Then she’ll scoff, begrudgingly grab her coat and stomp out through the snow to the car. In her Crocs. Have you seen these shoes? The snow goes INSTANTLY through those holes.
On the drive to the gym, you can probably guess her most frequently used statement: “I’m cold.”
Could I turn the heat up more in the car? Absolutely. But because I’m wearing appropriate winter clothing (AKA thin sweatshirt) and keep a “healthy” layer of fat during winter hibernation, it feels stuffy in the car if the heat blasts for too long. Sorry, kid, but the driver’s comfort supersedes your desire to manufacture a climate in the car to match your beach attire.
Of course, I know where she got this nonsense “it’s not winter” worldview. She’s growing up in the Inland Northwest. Just like I did. And I was that kid at recess wearing a short-sleeve shirt and shorts deep into November. My parents nagged me to wear my winter jacket to school every day, which probably made more sense because I often walked or rode my bike to school, but as soon as I was out of sight, I ripped off that jacket, tied it around my waist and felt the frigid breeze against my dry, wind chill-tattered skin.
But I’m not insane like this new generation. If I had holes in my shoes, it was because I kept using the toes of them to offset my shoddy bicycle brakes.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad