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Barry Lewis

It’s cool to be cold

Barry Lewis
Posted 2/4/22

I’d like to offer a suggestion to all you parents and grandparents who bought your kids a new winter coat during the holidays with the sincere thought of keeping them warm. Nice gesture.

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Barry Lewis

It’s cool to be cold

Posted

I’d like to offer a suggestion to all you parents and grandparents who bought your kids a new winter coat during the holidays with the sincere thought of keeping them warm. Nice gesture.

But you might as well ask for the coat back. Then re-gift it. Exchange it. Give it to someone who needs it. Someone who will use it.

Because rest assured - it hasn’t been used. Nor will it be used.

Not this winter. Not next.

Maybe when they’re in college. Sophomore year. Maybe.

Seems most youngsters are just too smart and too cool to be seen walking around or waiting for the school bus in a warm winter coat when it's freezing.

You think I know why kids’ have an aversion to coats?

All I know is that it’s now cool to be cold. Real cold.

Every morning on my way into work I pass dozens of street corners with dozens of seemingly healthy kids, mostly teenagers, boys and girls, black and white, tall and short. All different as can be. The common thread is that they’re not wearing any warm threads. Some even go sans long pants. And it's cold.

That’s why I’m in a heated car. Sitting on heated seats. Sipping hot coffee. Wearing a winter coat. It’s cold.

I know it’s cold because my car’s outside thermometer this week said it was negative degrees. The idiot light had a picture of a guy with chattering teeth. But apparently, it’s not too cold for teenagers, who are constantly reminding us how little we know about life.

They have decided that it's much better to die a slow, painful death by frostbite or suffer with a debilitating cold that leaves them with a fever, chills, runny nose, watery eyes, sore throat and more mucus than a body deserves to have – than to be bothered with putting on and then zippering up a simple piece of clothing that will keep them warm.

Don’t worry, the United States doesn’t have a monopoly on freezing teens. Statistics Canada reports that 79 percent of Canadian teens don’t want to wear their winter coats. Good cold, eh?

Some experts say there may be more to this than the stubbornness of childhood. Winter coats can be like iron maidens for kids with sensory issues. Point taken. We’ve all felt over bundled, and that can feel horrific to a child already struggling with the outside world’s control of their little bodies.

When I was a kid, we all wore those bulky snorkel parkas.

There was more substance than style behind these winter coats.

You never really worried about anyone stealing your snorkel parka, because who would steal a snorkel parka? But often you wound up taking home someone else’s snorkel parka because we all wore one. They all looked alike. The only difference was the color. Green or blue.

But they were warm. And deceivingly dangerous.

When you put up the hood and zippered all the way, your visibility was pretty much restricted to just what was in front of you. Like trying to view life though a peephole.

While it may drive adults crazy to see fashion sense trump common sense, there isn’t much research to back folklore that being cold can lead to a cold.

A 1968 New England Journal of Medicine study verified everything every stubborn 6-year-old has yelled at his mother during the coat wars.

Volunteers were first infected with a cold virus, then chilled and checked for symptoms. The study showed that dampness and cool temperatures didn’t increase the chance or severity of a cold.

So going without a winter coat might be a harmless sign of rebellion. Maybe the chill builds character.

But what kind of character proves their ‘coolness’ by wearing shorts and flip-flops in the snow?

Barry Lewis is a longtime journalist and author who lives with his wife Bonnie in the Town of Neversink. He can be reached by email at barrylewis­scdemocrat@gmail.com.

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