The Winter Demon

The transition to winter is a hideous event that sneaks up on me every year. This year, it caught me completely off guard. I assumed it would ease itself upon me — a light dusting of white, then another, for a month or so, until I was reacquainted with the cold. I’d go from sneakers to waterproof boots, until I was finally ready for the big boots. I’d find that little snow brush with the scraper on the end at my leisure, and I’d schedule a tire change once I started to feel the tires slide.

But it wasn’t polite like that. It just appeared, dumped snow, and caused a sudden spike in highway fatalities. It robbed me of daylight and warmth — things I now realize I never appreciated enough. It told me I work too much, and now I get to sit in the dark and think about what a mistake I’ve made.

Winter reminds me that I’m surrounded by people who can afford to be optimistic about winter. They buy thousand-dollar space suits to frolic in the deep frost, and ten-thousand-dollar machines loaded onto four-thousand-dollar trailers pulled by hundred-thousand-dollar trucks. The summer provided them enough bounty to take month-long vacations in the mountains, riding their expensive machines between the peaks and valleys.

I think we ought to ban winter. It serves no purpose except to remind me of my financial deficiencies — and my vitamin deficiencies. It turns me pale. It turns me cynical.

It turns me evil.

But the evil thoughts aren’t me, I promise. They’re the result of the demon who lives in my head — the one that keeps me moving and occupied when everything around me goes into hibernation.

Whenever a hundred-thousand dollar truck speeds past me on the icy highway, it’s the demon who hopes to see it later upside-down and on fire in a ditch — not me.

Whenever I see pictures of beautiful people in their fancy snow gear, drinking whiskey and smiling in the mountains, it’s the demon who imagines an avalanche swallowing them whole — not me.

And when the wealthy vanish to warmer climates for the winter, literally shutting down their businesses because their rental properties and investments pay for everything, it’s the demon who hopes their pipes burst while they’re gone. It’s the demon who wants them to get robbed in Italy by pickpockets. It’s the demon who wishes them financial ruin so they can finally understand how awful winter really is.

Not me.

I’m glad everyone else seems to be enjoying it.