Winter Turns Me Into A Bear

I don’t know what it is about winter, but I turn into a bear and it’s not pretty. I walk around in vacuous state, my mind muddled by cold winds and teeth that rattle all the way to work. When I get home at night, I want to drop my head into a pot of hearty soup, wiping the sides clean with a big wheat roll. My preferred nightly activity is napping until bedtime. If my family tries to talk to me, I answer with incoherent grunts and groans, hoping that they figure it out on their own. And don’t even get me started about how much I hate taking off the clothes I’ve warmed up all day by wearing them, only to step into cold pajamas and an even colder bed.


I think the problem is that I don’t like winter and I’m going to bet that bears don’t like it much either. Who would enjoy sleeping in a hard, cold cave and living off their fat stores? I can’t blame them for wanting to drift off to slumber land, dreaming about chasing salmon up the stream and scratching their backs on tree bark, until spring wakes them up again. I’d love to roll out of bed tomorrow morning and find that summer has come with strappy sandals and wide brimmed hats (and that I’ve lived off my fat stores and I’m skinny—but that’s the impossible dream.) But I’m pretty sure I’m waking up to another day of icy rain that my awful windshield wipers are no match for. My sympathy to those of you that have to brave blizzards and snow drifts—I’m sure you wish you were a bear too.