bucking up, undersharing and cocoa

Cold schmold.

In MY day . . .

Wait. Am I not old enough to use that line yet?

No, I think I am.

Living in Missouri has made me soft, and it's not just from all the Christmas cookies. When the weather dips below 25, I start talking about summer and heat and how the perfect temperature involves me sitting on black asphalt at noon in the middle of August.

It also reminds me of my college days when I drove from my home in Iowa back to school in Wisconsin following Christmas break. One winter, the wind chill dipped into the -30s on my drive back. So while my dear little Camry tried its hardest to keep up with the heat, I wore a coat . . . while wrapped in a blanket.

And my 19-year-old self made it back to college just fine.

I didn't even have to tweet about my struggles or write a Facebook post.

BECAUSE THERE WAS NO FACEBOOK. Or maybe there was . . . but Concordia University Wisconsin didn't have it yet, so . . . basically there was no Facebook.

Then there was the trip back to Wisconsin when it was so cold that my mom let me take her flip phone back with me and then mail it back to her.

Are you getting this? This means I had no cell phone and was driving nine hours to school all by myself.

AND I SURVIVED.

Or the time that the Wisconsin thermometer read -25 with a windchill of -50. I bundled up and went outside to warm my car up, and that little Toyota started up just fine . . . and proceeded to run for a good half hour before she even started to feel remotely warm.

I'm just saying . . . just because we're calling thing "bomb cyclones" and posting pictures of our patio furniture covered in snow and loading up on bread and peanut butter, we're not going to die.

Our ancestors dealt with cold just this bad and in far chillier living conditions.

Like, you know, soddies.

Log cabins.

Around fires.

And they very likely had no one to share it with other than those in their immediate family or party. No texting. No tweeting. No blogging. They just did it.

So here's to bucking up, undersharing, and more cocoa in 2018.