poka bean

survival of the beachiest

I recently returned from a 4-day trip to Minnesota where I attended an outdoor wedding. Yes, that's right. Outdoor wedding. In Northern Minnesota. In February.

You'll be glad to know I not only survived the cold, I survived the relentless stream of questions. Abby, do you need to borrow a warmer coat? Are you warm enough? Don't you think you should wear a hat? Are you warm enough? Do you have the right kind of shoes? Are you warm enough? Do you want to borrow another sweater? Are you warm enough? Do you need to borrow a warmer coat? Do you need to borrow a warmer coat? DO YOU NEED TO BORROW A WARMER COAT???

NO.

Thank you. I am fine. I know you think I'm just a clueless California blond but I do, in fact, know how to dress myself. No, I've never LIVED in a cold climate before but I have BEEN to cold places many times and it's not rocket science, people. Layers, wool, and down. Hats, scarves, and gloves. Long freaking underwear.**

It irritates the malarky out of me when cold weather people think warm weather people don't have a clue about living like they do and this somehow makes them superior...like Californians don't know what REAL LIFE is like because we don't have to shovel our driveways or scrape ice off our windshields or add a wind chill factor to our temperature readings.

Don't get me wrong, I had an absolutely lovely time this last weekend and defintely appreciated it when people asked me if I was warm enough, etc. out of genuine concern. But it really makes me crazy when cold weather people ask those questions just to prove that they are Mighty and All-Knowing Expert Winter Warriors and I am nothing more than, like, an airhead dumb blond who like, totally doesn't understand the way things, like, work outside her Southern California bubble. Like totally. For sure.

Well, duh. Of course I'm not hip on the cold weather scene since I don't live in it all the time but that makes me neither completely ignorant about nor completely incapable of coping with the cold.

The way I see it, everyone's an expert at doing life where they live. Obviously I'm not well-versed in the proper etiquette for snow activities like cross country skiing or sledding or snow shoeing, but you know what? I could out beach-etiquette any Minnesotan, any day of the week. I could teach you cold weather folk a thing or two about not shaking out your towels into the wind so that the sand blows all over the natives who are innocently soaking up the sun on their regular beachfront real estate. And I could teach you not to wear jeans to the beach. Or jean shorts...in fact, no denim of any kind or tank tops, if you're male. And absolutely no socks. Or Tevas. Or WORSE...socks AND Tevas. I beg of you. Please. Just don't.

And no, I may not know the finer points of driving in snow but I could out-drive ANY cold weather person in LA traffic on the 405 at 5:30pm on a Friday with a cell phone in one hand and a stick shift in the other while I SIMULTANEOUSLY steer with my knee, guzzle my grande decaf non-fat iced latte from Starbucks, apply my makeup, switch cds and fiddle with the stereo controls to find my favorite song, gesture madly at the jerk who just cut me off, and cross 6 lanes of bumper-to-bumper SUVs to get into the carpool lane.

And yes, I know exactly what you're thinking now that you've just read that. Ugh, California drivers! But that is PRECISELY my point...without living in the reality of this culture, you are not at liberty to judge. To y'all, good driving is watching for black ice and not hitting any deer or moose, but survival driving in California is not getting run over by a Hummer and multi-tasking so that the hours of time you spend in traffic aren't a complete waste.

We all have tremendous expertise in our own places of origin, our own cultures, with no one's expertise or culture being superior or inferior to the other (which, I feel, is a very generous statement for a native San Diegan to make) so what do you say we put an end to all the you-know-nothing-of-my-world-so-you-must-be-a-total-idiot SNOBBERY?

I will if you will.


**Mom and Dad...this is not the appropriate time to bring up the story about the family road trip when we stopped in Amarillo, TX in the winter and it was really cold and there was snow on the ground but I didn't believe you that I would need to put on shoes and a coat to be warm enough so I got out of the car barefoot, yadi yadi yada. For the last time, I WAS IN SECOND GRADE. It was the first time I had ever seen snow so this DOES NOT COUNT, not to mention, it's high time to give this story a rest anyway.

Posted by Poka Bean at 9:43 PM