1. Havenât you kind of gotten used to hibernating?
Everybody likes to go on and on about how they canât wait for the warm weather, but be honest, youâve grown to enjoy the peace and solitude brought on by an entire season of Arctic chill. When you slept in until two in the afternoon on Saturdays, you could find some measure of solace, looking out the window, viewing the barren icescape and telling yourself, whatever, I wouldnât have gone outside anyway. But now youâre going to start getting woken up really early in the morning to the sounds of chirping birds and all of that other springtime nonsense. âCome outside and play!â The whole world will be demanding that you get out of your comfortable bed and put on a pair of shorts.
2. Youâre going to have to wear shorts
Do you like wearing shorts? That was a rhetorical question. Nobody likes wearing shorts. Maybe I shouldnât speak for everybody, but for me, there are certain parts of the body that donât necessarily want to be on display for everyone in the world. Which isnât to say that I donât have great ankles and calves. OK, you know what? Maybe I donât need to talk specifically about me here. But shorts are annoying. Theyâre either too long and baggy, making you look like a little kid, or theyâre way too short, making you look like a 1970s minor league basketball player. Why canât we just all wear really loose fitting, lightweight pants? Wouldnât those be comfortable for springtime? Or what about capris? I was promised that everybody would be wearing capris by now. Why did you lie to me, 2003 Spring J. Crew menâs catalog?
3. Itâs impossible to keep up with an appropriate level of spring enthusiasm
Everybody loves spring. You have to. Thereâs no other alternative. Itâs like, as soon as that last pile of snow melts, thereâs already a group of people your age walking back from the park, and theyâre all holding lacrosse sticks, just out for a nice early-spring lacrosse-toss. Where do you keep lacrosse equipment all year? Doesnât it get really dusty? How do you all already look so impossibly tan? And you get that pit in the depths of your stomach, like holy shit, Iâm doing it again, Iâve probably already done it: Iâve wasted spring. And so you make a really way-too-late effort to go to the park and post spring photos to Instagram, you hashtag stuff like #lovespring, and I donât know what else really, Iâm not too good at hashtagging. But no matter how much you try to enjoy spring, you canât shake that feeling that youâre not really enjoying it, certainly not as much as everyone else, not the lacrosse guys, not your neighbors. Seriously, where do you guys get time to play croquet? I mean, I work a full-time job too, and Iâm regularly forgetting to eat lunch.
4. We wonât get to say âPolar Vortexâ anymore
Yes, this winter was a cold one. As a New Yorker, Iâd never before experienced what it felt like to have a frigid wind immediately freeze to my cheeks the tears they had just a second ago forced from my eyes. I had to buy a new coat, another pair of gloves, mittens, there really didnât exist an adequate number of layers that would have properly insulated me from temperatures that hung out around zero degrees on a daily basis. But, someone came up with the term âPolar Vortex.â And we got to say it. A lot. Surprisingly, it added a level of depth and sophistication to virtually every interaction. And there was nothing exclusive about it. Whether it was a college professor or the mentally unstable panhandler trying to stick up a subway with a banana, not a single conversation passed this season without somebody throwing a hard PV. I donât know why it worked, but it did. It was like a very tiny packet of Mexican seasoning that turned this managerâs special ground chuck of a winter into three month long Taco Tuesday. But now itâs over. What else do I have to talk about? Nothing.
5. There is no spring
For real, spring is just a myth, a marketing strategy cooked up by advertising wizards to make you spend tons of money on spring clothing. Itâs like, buy this jacket, itâs lighter than your winter coat. Or, donât you think it would be a cool idea to wear these boat shoes? So you buy them, the jacket and the boat shoes. And itâs great for that one day after winter when the temperature outside is nice enough that you donât need a scarf. But then a week later itâs warm. Nobody wears a jacket when itâs warm out, regardless of how lightweight the material is. Itâs the same with those boat shoes, theyâre made to be worn sockless, but once the temperature starts rising, your feet need socks, Iâm telling you, do everybody a favor and wear some socks, OK? Because there is no spring. Itâs cold, and then itâs colder, and then itâs really cold, and then itâs nice for like a day or two, and then itâs fucking hot. And youâre like, what happened to spring? There is no spring.