The Hungering Cold

Sweetie and I have decided that the cold you suffer getting into the car at the end of the day, when it’s so cold you don’t talk because talking allows heat to escape the mouth, is actually indistinguishable from being hungry.  We sat in the frozen motionless air of our mobile frost cave, waiting for the engine to get warm enough to turn the heater on, and could not decide if we were hungry or not. We were getting off early from work by the simple expedient of leaving after the boss has gone home but before you’re scheduled to, and were trying to decide whether or not we should make dinner early as well, but could not honestly tell whether or not this dying sensation was separate or different from being cold. Profound bodily distress is apparently like bright light, where after a certain point of intensity you can’t tell what color it is. So we went home and cooked hot food to cover all our bases. 

 

I believe the Alaskan wisdom on this phenomenon is thus: When in doubt, eat hot food to solve both possible problems. Then you are fat enough to be insulated from the cold to a greater degree, and therefore better suited to address the problem. The rest of America should move here so that there’d be a reason for their overall shape.