COLUMN: Yes, it’s cold enough for me….

Each year the first frost liquefied the tomatoes I forgot to pick and a Sun City retirement condo starts looking a little more attractive. Winter is the season I always forget until it hits me like the realization that George W. really did win the election.

My number one complaint is that winter makes people stupid. Hot weather makes people lazy and slow moving, but cold weather apparently inhibits the brain’s neural transmitters in the logic center of the old thought melon.

Count the number of times somebody has greeted you with this: “Is it cold enough for ya?” Has there ever been an answer to this question? No, really, it’s not cold enough for me, I’m just shuffling around here looking for one of my nipples that fell off yesterday.

The next profound statement incorporates a strange brand of religious meteorology: “It’s colder than hell!” Well, call me Billy Graham, but I think just about every place is colder than hell. I’ve never seen the devil depicted as wearing a parka.

Cold weather also brings the worst form of exaggeration. If you dare bring up the subject of temperature, be prepared to play “Top That Story!” It usually starts like this: You innocently say something like, “That 30 degrees below last night was the coldest I’ve ever been.”

Let the Games begin:

Contestant No. 1: “That’s nothin’ I remember the time I was in Alaska and the gasoline froze right out of the pump at the filling station.”

Contestant No. 2: “That’s nothin’ I remember when I was in Antarctica and the penguins were actually trying to get swallowed by whales just so they could get warm.”

Contestant No. 3 “That’s nothin’ I was on the planet Pluto once and …”

My second complaint about winter is that the Global Warming theory based on ozone depletion just isn’t working for me. In a desperate move on my part last Jan. 25 I bought a couple cans of hair spray and shot them toward the sky in a vain attempt to puncture my own personal hole in the ozone. But just as the Final Net was drifting back down on my face and neighbors were starting to stare, I came to my senses. I logically deduced that if hair spray really had any effect on warmth, Utah probably would have been charcoal by now.

So, this year I’m switching to a couple cans of that aerosol cheese spread.

Well, if I’m going to cause irreparable damage to the ozone, I’d rather it be with a food group than a hair spray.

Slightly Off Center appears every Wednesday in the Statesman. Comments may be e-mailed to dennish@ext.usu.edu