Damien Galeone

A little over a week after Christmas, we woke up to a winter wonderland – 9 days too late to be charming. What might have been a charming wintry atmosphere was now just freezing cold water on the ground that made it dangerous to do anything. It mocked. In the ensuing days, snow begat more snow and harsh freezing weather begat more harsh freezing weather.

It’s eleven days after our first snowfall, and when I look outside from my balcony, I expect to see Kurt Russel chasing David Keith and Wilfred Brimley around with a flamethrower in our park.

Like many people who don’t have lobotomies, we spend more time indoors in the deep freeze weeks. Me, Burke, the cat, the dog. We stay inside and do winter activities – namely, gain weight and hate each other.

OK, ‘hate’ is too strong a word, but only as much as ‘gain’ is too mild a word. The dog has taken to running around in circles and starting fights with my hands and ankles just to release some pent-up tension. We go outside with her, of course, and the .00021% of husky in her loves the snow beyond anything. She runs and plays. It’s an old story – we’re all stuck inside, the weather is freezing, and cats in small flats = a Shining situation.

Moreover, I’m dealing with the comedown from Christmas. No, not the merry fun time comedown into real life and all of its horrors. No. I am talking about the holiday-sanctioned period of guiltless gluttony comedown into eating like a human who wants to stay alive. For me, this means popcorn.

I don’t know what it is about popcorn, but I could easily eat two bags of microwave popcorn a night. This is despite all the downsides – like the forty minutes of flossing I have to do afterwards or the fact that it gives me very weird hyper-realistic dreams. There are adult themes and scenarios in these dreams, but they never quite involve the people I’d expect them to. Instead of sipping daiquiris with Adriana Lima, I get Adrian Brody (sparkling conversationalist if I’m being honest). Or I get a strange mix: I didn’t go skinny-sledding with Rihanna, but with Rihanna Gosling. Strange. Not horrible. Strange.  

In any event, it’s hard to ween off the popcorn or the after-dinner mini Toblerone(s). My mind harks back with glee to the holidays. Two-and-a-half tiny weeks ago. Chocolate in the morning, booze in coffee, lasagna so fatty that my eyes gained weight just looking at it. We indulged. Now, my pants are tight and I hear the unpopped bags of popcorn calling me from their place in the cabinet. My dog is trying to murder my ankles. The cat is driving me insane as only a cat can. This is especially true in the case of a 19-year-old cat who, her ninja skills having depleted, pulls other tricks from her bag of jedi cat torture.

I reached a depressed state, one only attainable through too many carbs and no sunlight and little Shih tzu bites on your ankles. For a brief spell there, frowns were my umbrella, rendered useless by wind. This most likely peaked while I was heading into work on Saturday morning in the snow, the freezing cold, and the dark for a full day of teaching. The bright side, or not, was that Saturday is Cheat Day. So even though I had been slightly cheaty in the last weeks, Saturday was the day I could do it with no guilt. I had sandwiches, chips and a Twix bar. I would wash them down with a Coke.

At lunch later that day, I sat above my sandwiches and felt pangs of guilt. But then I looked outside and had a realization. What I’m going through is just human, historically, sociologically, physiologically human. For most of human history, eating more and gaining weight in winter was not a failure of willpower but a reasonable response to the cold, the dark, and the fact that big animals who lived around you were also hungry and much stronger and faster than you. Seasonal weight gain helped people store energy, stay warm, and survive. Rich holiday food was a way of storing calories for the upcoming cold months. Also, everyone else was doing it too, so why not? When we didn’t heat and electricity, fat was practical insulation and security. Just ask yourself, if you were travelling through an arctic tundra and needed to cut open an animal to stuff yourself into and keep warm, would you rather cut open me or a gymnast? That’s right. Five points to me.

I decided that a little winter padding makes me part of a long proud tradition of trying to stay alive in winter. I ate my sandwiches with glee. I guzzled my Coke like I was in a commercial for the product. And that night, on the way home, I picked up snacks for everyone. Well, as long as everyone loves popcorn.