By Peter Celauro
Staff Writer
As October draws to a close, the always-fashionable students of Pepperdine are beginning their yearly ritual. Students campus-wide are retiring their sundresses and t-shirts. They’re no longer spending their Saturdays at the beach. And, saddest of all, they’re reluctantly pulling on their sweaters and coats. After all, “it’s only like 65 degrees out, dude!”
Pepperdine has noticed that fall is here, and winter’s not far behind.
I’m no different, of course. I too have noticed the light nip of the wind as it rushes by me on my way to class. I’ve even begun to make a habit of stopping off at the HAWC at night for some hot chocolate. And it was on just such a stop last week, reading a letter from my friend back home while I stood in line, that I made a startling realization: I’ve become a wuss.
According to the letter, my friends back in Chicago are engaging in the typical Chicago autumn activities. The weather is a refreshing 50 degrees, so Saturday afternoons are either spent swimming in my buddy’s unheated pool or playing shirts/skins football outside. Sandals are always in season in Midwestern October, and shorts and t-shirts are standard attire by day and night. Unless, of course, you’re at a Bears game, in which case one wears gym shorts on the legs and brightly colored body paint on the chest.
Meanwhile, I’m here in Malibu bundling up in layers and bringing coats to class on sunny days. I complain about the clouds that have officially ended tanning season, and I turn the heat on anytime I’m in the car after 6 p.m.
Walking home from the HAWC that night, I tried to come to terms with the newly discovered truth: living in California these three years has made me a wuss to the cold. I used to scoff at my mother’s pleading’s to take a coat with me when I went outside to shovel snow. Now I don’t leave my beachside apartment without one. This, to me, is a travesty.
The Southern California natives around me, of course, have no idea there’s anything wrong. Having never experienced real cold before, they wonder what it is I’m raving about when I yearn for “Chicago winters” and “snowball fights.”
“But it’s warm here, dude,” they’ll say. “Why would you want to be cold when you can be, like, warm?”
For three years I too subscribed to that attitude. But no more.
Sure, it feels good to be warm because you’re soaking up the sun on the sands of Zuma Beach. But there’s something more gratifying, more comforting about being warm because you’re bundled up in a sweater, snuggling by the fire with a loved one as snow falls outside. And nothing makes you feel alive like stepping outside to a swift kick in the rump from Mother Nature in the form of a freezing blast of wind. The cold challenges you, dares you to step out in it and blaze through your day. And besides all that, how is Santa supposed to land on your roof if there’s no snow on it?
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to speak ill of Southern California. It’s a beautiful place, and I’m not going to say I don’t enjoy the sunny days and palm trees. But from now on, when winter starts to roll into Malibu I’m not going to shiver and turn up the heat. I’m going to shed the layers and soak up the cold as a reminder of my roots. I’m a cold-blooded Chicagoan, and if you think it’s cold here now, come home with me for Christmas! I assure you, what doesn’t freeze you can only make you stronger.
October 24, 2002