When you live in a cold weather region, there’s no denying that enduring winter can be an appallingly horrendous ordeal. It’s miserably cold and excess amounts of wind, snow and ice can make travel and most other general life functions an unfairly difficult affair. Aside from temperatures that make for favorable sleeping conditions, there’s really nothing about it that’s pleasant.

So when one is forced to take on such gruelling conditions for several months at a time, it’s not hard to understand why there tends to be an aura of excitement when people anticipate being injected with “new life” by the upcoming spring season, which promises to offer relief from the arctic awfulness.

While this degree of anticipatory optimism is understandable, blindly ignoring the obvious fact that spring is nothing but a never ending nightmare of thunderstorms, hail, floods and 3 a.m. tornado siren wakeup calls, with an occasional nice, pleasant sunny day peppered in once or twice a month, is not. Call me a cynic if you must, but when I’m spending a third consecutive day uncomfortably crammed crotch-to-ass with people I barely know in a dingy apartment complex storm cellar, rarely does the thought “hey, at least it’s not snowing” enter my head.

Now I have lived in the Midwest my entire life, so this is the only geographical region whose seasonal tendencies I can comment on. So if you live elsewhere and have never seen any sort of storm chaser video footage, to live in the Midwest in the springtime is to live with an uneasy feeling that God has nothing better to do than deliver constant reminders of just how easily he can kill you.

One moment you’re sitting happily in your living room laughing and learning in equal measure during the Family Matters episode where Urkel teams with Grandmama to teach Eddie Winslow the true meaning of friendship, the next you’re picking up the pieces after this happens…

It’s a tragic tale those of us who dwell in the middle (and from the sound of things, the southern portions) of the country know all too well.

What’s worse than the eclectically horrible conditions is the fact that many of the same obnoxiously optimistic people who spend all winter making sure you know just how badly they yearn for spring to rescue them from the horrors of their self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder don’t experience even the slightest change of perspective when their beloved season forces them to spend nearly every night passing the time reading by candlelight because the power’s out and it’s too dangerous to go anywhere else.

Never mind the eight consecutive days of meteorological hell you’ve just endured, once you get to that oh, so rare day of mild, sunny conditions, these chowder heads (some of whom multiply the annoyance by wearing the same stupid pink and white striped sweater every day) spend hours going on and on about how this is the true wonder of the season, even going as far an executing several Mary Tyler Moore-esque twirls throughout the town, shouting “Spring Has Sprung!” for everyone to hear, ignoring the fact that the moronic blind twirling will inevitably cause them to be knee-deep in one of the several mud puddles created by the previous night’s typhoon.

Final Words:

Now, I will admit there are additional factors that aid my hatred of spring. For starters, I’m currently employed as a sportswriter, who literally cannot earn a living due to high school athletic director’s hangups about not sending teenagers to play baseball in what amounts to quicksand. Also I’ve been told my “naturally pessimistic attitude and inability and refusal to act on the happier impulses of life” (love you too, mom) are more suited for the dreary and cold winter conditions.

So is it fair to assume everyone should think like me? Of course not. If they did, 95% of calls to suicide hotlines would never get through. But a sunny disposition on spring doesn’t make any sense. The whole notion that “it breeds new life in us all” is totally contradictory to the fact that you spend the duration of the season running for said life from the almost hourly hailstorms and twisters you have to face.

Even if your whole base argument is that at least it’s better than winter (which it isn’t), that’s essentially like loving being deaf because hey, at least you’re not blind. Sorry, but I prefer to have all my senses in tact, thank you. They help me decipher just what a vomit-inducing hellhole the months of late-March-mid-May truly are.

Final Score: 0.7/10