One of my aphorisms goes like this: “He (or she) who complains too much about the weather needs to get a life.” At different times the line comes back to me, including when I was recently being buffeted by freezing rain propelled by strong gusts of wind; and was busy grousing inside, too! One of those days when you can hear plenty of other complaints, as people shake themselves off en route into stores, telling you portentously how rotten it is out there.
Let them (and me) try on WW I for size! When the heavy rains of, say, November or March really churned up the trenches, and when all these young guys who could hardly survive the mud and cold were nonetheless enjoined ever and again to go “over the top,” hurling themselves into the fire of machine guns on the other side, and decimated in droves, when not simply wounded or shell-shocked (for life).
Nothing deterred, outmoded old generals kept giving such orders, even though these attacks generally brought little to no gain, and didn’t alter a long stalemate in that horrid conflict. I’m no fan of generals like France’s Joffre, who moralistically urged his charges forward long-distance, i.e., from his comfy quarters well removed from the front, where he stayed warm and ate like a king.
But don’t get me started! It was a terrible, awful war, and the weather certainly contributed. Medical maladies in these trenches were rampant, and in a memoir on what it took to survive the elements cum snipers, etc., you feel it all acutely (the book in question being Robert Graves’ classic “Goodbye to All That”).
Of course there were earlier senseless conflicts, too, like the Crimean War, where diseases like cholera, aided again by the weather, plus bad water, killed off thousands. Before poor generalship again made things even worse! Ah me…
And you (and I) complain about getting wet as we exit nice, heated cars and enter nice, heated buildings? C’mon!
Over-the-top weather complaint does nettle me, and bores me, too, as you can tell from the preceding; but I often reply to peoples’ kvetching on that subject by bits of smirky humor. For instance, some will ask me my favorite season, and I’ll say: “Only summer, fall, winter, and spring.” (Doesn’t usually get much of a laugh.)
Or (to regain our main thread), a person will ask gravely and oh so predictably: “What do you think of this crummy weather today?” To which I’ll often reply something like: “I think it’s the most beautiful day of the year!” Or: “I like weather, ALL weather.”
In an odd way, you know what all this reminds me of, and please don’t get angry at the analogy? Trumpophobic gripes, which you obviously hear a lot as well!
Someone will declare that “Trump’s the most awful human on earth, right?” To which Mr. Tongue-in-Cheek (moi) sometimes replies as follows: “Funny, I talked to him yesterday, and he speaks highly of you.” Few laugh at that one either…
But you know what? Given the heating, cheap, good clothes, umbrellas, etc. that we now possess; and given also that the president doesn’t irk me as much as some tell me should be the case, I guess there’s a bit of gravitas beneath my small attempts at mirth on both subjects.
You find Trump too authoritarian? Similar to what’s argued above, try on Russia’s Stalin or Peter the Great for size! The latter liked going around his palace and playing amateur dentist to poor courtiers who couldn’t vamoose fast enough! You could also replace Trump with a Mao or Pol Pot type, and see how THAT feels by (extreme) contrast!
Ditto for most of our weather complaints, if not all. (I do realize that Western NY blizzards or Florida hurricanes are no joking matters.) But for most, compare to WW I?
Or even to modern Nigeria or Yemen amidst blistering heat, along with plentiful violence. But I guess I’m getting repetitive and overly moralistic.
A bit of comic relief in this weather department, as in the political realm, can maybe defuse better, and catch more flies? Which is where I’d better close, before you get out the hook!