[ back ]
Weather holds small talk together
(by Barbara Christian - March 08, 2012)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Weather holds small talk together
What is it about the weather that so fascinates us we can't stop talking about it?
I'm thinking it's because it is one of the few things in our electronic, digitized world over which we have absolutely no control. It must drive the control freaks and micro-managers stark raving mad and railing against it like the caveman during the first windstorm.
Weather is what keeps us up yawning in front of the TV after 11 p.m. We think we can go to bed knowing what our day might be like atmospherically, even when we know the rest of that day is likely to be a crap shoot.
And when we are not looking at the weather to plan our days, we depend on weather as a kind of savior, the go-to ice breaker and conversation starter at parties and weddings, where strangers come together with absolutely nothing to say to one another.
Weather is that one thing we can depend on to get us over those uncomfortable moments that come right after, "Hello, I am happy to meet you." Weather is also the conversation du jour during random grocery store encounters with casual acquaintances.
This winter, our weather talk has been all about what a mild season we have had. Here's how that goes.
Someone will remark, "Can you believe the weather this winter?" to which another will say, "We're still not out of the woods." "Yeah," says someone else, "we've had some of our biggest snowstorms in history in March," to which the next person will recall "that Easter Sunday a few years ago when we had snow up to our knees."
The winter weather exhausted, someone will switch topics, slightly, to the summer ahead and tell the others, "Sure hope it's not as wet as last year. I'm still wringing out my socks, ha, ha, ha."
But before we get to summer, we must welcome spring and the grab bag of weather that goes with it. Buckeye Chuck and Punxatawny Phil aside, the calendar tells us spring will arrive on March 20.
In California, on March 19, swallows return to Capistrano. Typical of downtrodden Northeast Ohio, it's buzzards that return to Hinckley on March 15. Both events happen with uncanny precision, no matter what the weather.
There are other predictors of spring, but they don't come from the swallows, buzzards or weatherman. We know spring is on the way when ...
We hear the sound of a "boinking" off the rim of our neighbor's basketball backboard, followed by the "tink-tink-tink" of a fast dribble across the cement forecourt.
Spring arrives with the vision of buckets hanging from maple trees across Geauga County.
It is predicted by pancake breakfasts at schools and fire halls and forecast with fish dinners at Catholic churches everywhere.
Spring comes with the mail and all of those garden catalogs picturing sumptuous veggies and luscious blooms we can never hope to duplicate.
Finally, spring and its myriad weather patterns will provide us with a new subject of conversation. And in the columns of writers stumped for a topic, weather is also the go-to subject.
[ back ]
