Thoughts on Cold and Stubbornness

   
It all started when The Boy said something last weekend that challenged me to not wear socks until November.

Well, to be honest, I'm not quite sure what he said, but it's possible it wasn't a direct challenge. All right, so whatever he said triggered the challenge gland in my brain which then came up with the idea of not wearing socks until November.

What? Don't you have a challenge gland in your brain?

Every fall, I go through some sort of demented competition with no one in particular and the entire world about how long I can go without turning on my heat. It’s a relatively benign way of letting my stubbornness and competitive instinct come out to play and generally less damaging than trying to beat my own record in Minesweeper or creating new ones in Angry Birds. Anyway, I usually win this game of heat because I live in an apartment building and the people who live in the apartments around me are wusses. They warm up their units, which means I have a layer of warm apartments around me and therefore don't have to touch the heat until it's -40 C with the wind chill.

Yesterday, I had to go to the UPS store to pick something up and it was a tad chilly out there. In fact, had the weather been just slightly more humid, that might've been snow. Weirdly enough, my feet were not as cold as my hands, but both extremities were still definitely registering the cold. On the way, I passed by the campsite of OccupyToronto, a clutch of about 200 tents in St. James Park. Then I started thinking of how it is only Canadians who will persevere and continue to camp outside when it is freezing and raining as hard as it is has been in the past week. It is a mark not only of their dedication to the cause, but also their innate Canadian-ness that they're staying put. I mean, instead of doing this in August or September, they are camping out in political protest at the end of October. In Canada. Thus proving that stubbornness and slight derangement is a national trait.

And it was when I passed by the tents and was sure I could see them huddling together for warmth, canvas cheek by canvas cheek, that it struck me. Since I can’t join them what with this degree of roughing it not being terribly wheelchair-friendly, I can support them in other ways. Show solidarity. Experience a tiny bit of their discomfort.

So, yes. What I might be saying is that I have in a rather astonishing leap of ridiculousness dedicated my not wearing socks to the cause. My toes are cold to support Occupy Toronto.

It seems slightly less nuts than doing it on a non-existent dare.
   

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