Send This Mess Back North
This is going to be an indoorsy kind of day.
Yesterday, my wife and I were sitting in the living room watching the Ohio State–Michigan football game, snowflakes whipping sideways across the screen like the stadium was inside a giant snow globe someone had just shaken too hard. It’s easy to enjoy all that from the comfort of a Georgia couch, wrapped in a blanket, sipping something warm, and knowing full well your car isn’t parked under three inches of frozen regret.
We talked about how miserable those fans must’ve been up in Ann Arbor. My wife said she’d never do that — never willingly sit in sleet for four quarters while a bunch of half-frozen college boys play freeze-tag with a football. “Those people are crazy,” she said. I told her they’re not crazy; they’re just used to it. They throw on 47 layers of flannel, thermal underpants, two parkas, and a pregame tailgate hot toddy — or whatever Yankees call it — and they’re good to go. They’re built for that weather.
We Southerners are not.
And I’ll swannee — Momma’s favorite go-to swear word — if that dad-gummed Yankee weather didn’t come a-callin’ this morning anyway.
No, this isn’t snow. Snow and I have a history — we’re old friends who visit once or twice a year. We share memories of childhood sledding, making snowcream with my kids, and the warm glow of the fireplace afterward. Snow is fun. Snow is tolerable.
This, though… this is that slow, chilly winter drizzle. The kind that seeps into your bones, blurring the line between wet and frozen. Temperature hanging in the upper 30s — not quite cold enough for snow. But too cold for human life to flourish. Just… gray, miserable, and relentless. It’s the kind of weather that makes a Southerner long for any other day, past or future.
Hey, Michigan, your weather got out of your yard again. I’m gonna need you to come fetch it and take it back home.
So what will we do today?
My wife will cover up with roughly 38 blankets — minimum — until she looks like a festive Appalachian hay bale. And if I turn my back for two seconds, that TV will mysteriously, almost supernaturally, drift its way over to the Hallmark Channel. One minute it’s football; the next it’s a woman in a red coat falling in love with a man who owns a struggling Christmas tree farm. Happens every time.
When I was young, a rainy day like this meant reading a book. I’d stretch out on the couch and finish Jaws, Grizzly, or the book version of Star Wars in a single afternoon. These days? I grab a real book, crack it open with the best intentions, and my eyes stage a full rebellion faster than Bing Crosby can say “Mele Kalikimaka.” Those fifty-something eye floaters start their hula routine across the page, the words swim, the print blurs, and inside of five minutes I’m gone — book sliding off my chest, rain still tapping the window, afternoon happily kidnapped by a nap
I could put on a football game, but the Falcons suck. They’re a weekly masterclass in letting folks down. And the NFL… I don’t even know what they’re playing anymore. Something kinda like football. Almost. Not quite. What even is that kickoff rule? And if a defensive player so much as exhales too close to the quarterback, it’s roughing the passer. Meanwhile, defensive backs can hitch a full piggyback ride on a receiver — no whistle, no flag, just encouragement to hold on tighter next time.
But really, days like this are God’s gentle way of telling Southerners, “Sit down somewhere and relax.” We’re not built for cold rain. We’re built for front porches, sweet tea, and humidity thick enough to butter biscuits with. So I’ll stay inside, listen to the rain tap against the windows, pretend I’m going to get something productive done, and probably end up asleep under one of those 38 blankets.
And if Michigan wants its weather back, it can come get it anytime. I’ll even drop it off at the UPS Store if they prefer — just slap a label on it and I’ll send it north with “Return to Sender” written in Sharpie.