Bright side or even colder?

jcp-reallyI just returned from the mountains where I dipped my feet in the proverbial “cool mountain stream.”  That description is not only wrong, but misleading in a way that could cause a man to lose his toes to frostbite.  Cool mountain stream, my rear end, which by the way is still shivering.

I suppose cool is a relative term.  To an Eskimo or a polar bear, the stream might have felt cool.  Maybe compared to say, ice, I suppose you could consider it cool.  Though, for the record, I think I saw a beaver with its gigantic teeth chattering like an industrial woodchipper.  I could be wrong here, but I don’t think beavers normally get cold in water.  No, old man winter might consider that stream cool, but me, I think it was just downright cold.

In fact, I have experienced brain freeze warmer than that water.  It was like a liquid polar glacier.  It was colder than the other side of the pillow.  It was even colder than a wife’s feet in February, and every man knows those puppies will wake you up in the middle of the night with their frosty touch.  Hypothermia stuck its finger in that stream, put on a jacket, and said, “No way, that’s too cold.”  It was so cold, one Mississippi became one Missississississississippi.  It was so cold you dipped in ten toes and came back with nine as all the little kids started yelling, “Look, Mommy, a toe shaped popsicle is floating down the stream!”  If you asked Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin how cold that stream was, they’d just look at you all confused, shrug their shoulders, and say, “It’s immeasurably cold.”

The frigid nature of that water was almost inconceivable.  (I do not think that word means what you think it means.  Hey, the water was cold, but you can never be too cold for a Princess Bride reference.)  My point is the stream was not cool, it was painfully frigid.  Other than that, I really don’t have a point, kinda like I don’t have a big toe on my left foot.  But hey, some kid got an interesting popsicle, a great story to tell their grandchildren, and emotional scars that could take years of therapy to overcome.  Bright side or even colder?  You decide.

Source: David Swann