Re: Massachusetts - we're back !!!!!
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BRIAN MCGRORY
A dampened outlook
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | May 27, 2005
I don't want to be hardy any more, I really don't. I don't want to turn the other cheek at nature's constant insults. I don't want any more of this cockamamie Calvinist claptrap that says New Englanders are the chosen people who are always expected to persevere.
Here's what I want: I want the damned sun. I want it to shine on my big stupid face.
I want to wake up one of these insipid mornings, look outside, and not have to say: ''Freezing drizzle. Better than yesterday."
Because I can't, not anymore, not after what Boston has gone through, not just this week or this month or this whole year, but now what seems like an entire miserable life.
I want what Los Angeles has, that's all, nothing more, nothing less. Or maybe San Diego. Give me mudslides. Give me forest fires. Make us run for our lives, because when we do, at least we'll be running across sun-dappled meadows, not through filth-ridden puddles.
It's late May, for God's sake. I want to drink a beer at Fenway Park to cool off, not in the vain hope that the alcohol will warm me.
I want to dress differently now than I did in March. I want to personally knock the ridiculous grins off the faces of every dermatologist and suburban landscaper who thinks this is the greatest May of our lives.
I want to stop paying the heating bill. I want to open the sunroof on my car. I want to have a reason to call in sick other than I really am sick because of how cold and wet it is outside.
Speaking of which, a friend informed me the other day that I'm probably afflicted with something called SAD, seasonal affective disorder. I told her to shut up.
Still, I looked it up online. It says that lack of sunlight can cause irritability, lethargy, overeating, depression, and anxiety.
Fascinating -- until the moment it wasn't, which was when I disgustedly clicked the computer off so I could finish a bag of potato chips before I locked myself in my room to keep the big dumb world at bay.
By the way, you want to see SAD, I'll show you SAD: Take a look in a mirror.
I don't want to wonder about the windchill factor any more. I don't want to keep thinking that spring is just around the corner.
I don't want to check out Seattle's forecast and see, as I just did, that it's going to be sunny and in the 80s all weekend.
We slog through vicious New England winters carrying the specter of a luscious spring with tulips and bunnies and little drops of dew forming on blades of vivid green grass.
We tell ourselves that winters shape our collective character and that summers are the reward for being better than everyone else.
We believe that we can't fully appreciate the breathtaking beauty of a soft June eve until we've withstood the hard edges of a February morning.
We've made a deal with the devil, weatherwise, and now he's not living up to his end. The result: We've become caricatures of ourselves, endlessly gray, unapologetically cranky, and relentlessly boring. What of it?
I want to personally call the notable Dr. Paul Epstein of the Harvard Medical School who wrote a letter published in yesterday's Globe that said, and I quote: ''You were never promised a rose garden. Nasty weather comes with the territory."
I want to call him and respectfully offer a dose of shut-the-hell-up -- and while we're at it, Doc, ever hear of something called SAD?
I believe I speak for the entire male heterosexual population of Boston when I say I'd like to walk down a city street and see a woman in something other than a trench coat.
I want to click onto the weather report and see something other than little pictures of clouds.
I don't want to be tough anymore. Been there, done that.
And the truth is, it was never that great. I give up. Just show me the sun.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
mcgrory@globe.com.
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