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A winter cold is one thing. Actually it’s several things: it’s a lot of sniffling and nose-dripping and coughing and other means of expulsion of various bodily fluids, some resulting from the necessary increased intake of non-bodily fluids, although if my body did suddenly start producing orange juice I don’t know whether I’d be disgusted or astounded. At least I know I’d never look at oranges the same way again. Anyway, a winter cold is a normal thing. Most people get colds during the winter because it’s normally when it’s cold outside and I know all I want to do when I get a cold is crawl into bed and pull blankets over me and hope I don’t start sweating orange juice because that would ruin the mattress. When it’s cold outside it’s nice to be able to hide under a pile of plush fabric and drink hot liquids, especially if you don’t have to go anywhere because when the weather is cold t it’s not always fun to go out, and going out is even worse when it’s cold and you have a cold.

That’s why a summer or even late spring cold, in addition to being most of the same things, is another thing entirely. There’s still that same desire to crawl under a pile of blankets and drink hot liquids but those are two things I really don’t want to do when the weather is warm out no matter how much I crank up the air conditioner. What makes it so awful is when the weather is warm that’s when I want to go outside or just get out and do things, but nobody wants to be around me when I have a cold, and even if they did it’s a really bad idea to go anywhere because I’ve never gotten over the time a cop pulled me over for driving under the influenza, but that’s another story. Summer and late spring, when the whole of nature is bursting with life and metaphorically screaming “Come play with me!”, is the last time you want to be stuck inside without even enough energy to play with yourself. This would seem like a good time to ask the obvious question, which is, if you get a cold in the summer is it called a “hot”? but really there is no good time to ask that question.

The important question is, how does a person even get a cold when the weather is warm anyway? Is it bad karma, and, if so, did that cop pull me over because of how I was driving my karma? I believe it’s actually a holdover from the winter even though I have absolutely no data to back this up. I believe a summer cold is caused by the virus getting into you sometime during the winter and being so exhausted by the trip, even though viruses don’t get jet lag as far as I know, that it falls into a deep sleep and wakes up, like Rip Van Winkle, to find that the world has been completely transformed. And, like Rip Van Winkle, the virus carries on with life as usual except instead of growing a hipster beard and sitting around the tavern drinking ale regaling passers-by with stories of the good old days the virus causes sniffling and nose dripping and coughing and various other expulsions.

I’ve been grinding away at this subject to sharpen my point which is that I now have a cold, and that wouldn’t be unusual for February but we’re getting the weather we should be getting in May. And thanks to climate change in May we’ll probably get the weather we should get in August, and in the future February will be the new May. That’s bad enough but I suspect that even if there’s no more cold we’ll still get colds. I’m not sure I want to think about that, or anything else right now, except that I want to crank up the air conditioning and go crawl into bed.

And now eine kleine Frühling musik.

Most people don’t think of the day after Valentine’s Day as anything special, unless they’re fans of St. Eusebius or a handful of other saints. Some of us don’t really think of Valentine’s Day itself as anything special, and in fact a couple of days before it my wife happened to say, “We haven’t got anything planned for that day, do we?” and I was so glad she said it because I didn’t have anything planned and if she’d been planning something special to celebrate the occasion I would have felt like a schmuck even though we’ve never celebrated it. It’s not like our anniversary which is much more personal and therefore much more special, but, on the other hand, stores don’t start stocking up on candy and hearts and flowers and cards and putting up big signs that say “Don’t forget YOUR ANNIVERSARY” the month before it happens.

I guess I’ve never thought of Valentine’s Day as particularly romantic because when I was a kid it wasn’t treated as a romantic occasion even though we did celebrate it if it happened to fall on a school day. In first through fifth grade I distinctly remember getting a pack of kids’ Valentine’s Day cards with a Star Wars theme or a superhero theme or maybe just some generic friendly theme. Every pack held thirty or forty cards, enough to give one to every one of my classmates, and the night before Valentine’s Day I’d dutifully write one out for every one of my classmates and the next day we’d exchange them. There wasn’t any love in the romantic sense being expressed; mostly it was just a way of saying, “Hey you, I know you.” One year, fourth grade, as a class project we each had to make a box that the other kids could drop our Valentine cards in. I’d just seen Disney’s Snow White so I based mine on the box the wicked queen tells the hunstman to put Snow White’s heart in, complete with a heart with a dagger through it, because nothing says “Valentine’s Day” like murder and the implication of cannibalism–in the Grimm version the huntsman brings the queen a deer’s heart and she, thinking it’s Snow White’s, eats it, but that’s another story. I wasn’t choosy about what the cards said but if there were some in the pack that had a somewhat personal message, like, “Hulk Never Smash You, Valentine!” I’d set those aside specifically for my friends, but I didn’t leave anybody in the class out—not even that one kid I barely knew even though we spent seven or eight hours a day together and who I’d once accidentally hit in the face during kickball, leading to a lot of crying and some bloodshed on both sides.

Everything changed in sixth grade.

Even looking back on it now from a great distance the sixth grade feels like a year of unrelenting bullying and harassment. Well, there was some relenting, but the budding hormones of adolescence and the fact that some kids were just assholes made it a pretty bad year. As a bit of a geek and an outsider I probably would have been a target anyway but I can almost pinpoint the moment that it started. I was reading Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and something confused me so I innocently asked a girl who was sitting across from me what a “period” was. Instead of answering me she just started giggling and ran around saying, “Chris doesn’t know what a period is!” And it became kind of a running joke. Some guys would taunt me with, “Hey Chris, do you know what a period is?” and I should have responded with “Yeah, it’s the dot at the end of a sentence, did you not know that?” or even “No, jackass, do you?” but those are the kinds of snappy comebacks you only think of after the statute of limitations has expired. Instead there was some crying and bloodshed on both sides.

I had friends so I wasn’t completely alone. I just spent a lot of time feeling like I was completely alone, especially when a particular group of bullies would surround me. They targeted my friends too sometimes but realizing that my friends and I were alone together would have been like thinking up a snappy comeback. My brain just couldn’t make those connections. All I could think of was how much I hated going to school each day.

The lowest point of the school year for me was the night before Valentine’s Day. I had the usual pack of forty cards. I picked out three and threw the rest away.

The next day I went to school with my three little cards. I was still taking my coat off when I heard a voice.

“Chris, this is for you.”

It was Danny, a kid I barely thought about, someone I’d never thought of as a friend exactly. I looked down at what he’d put in my hand. It was a card with Han Solo and Chewbacca that said, “Not even Darth Vader scares me with you around, Valentine!” He was gone before I could say anything and I was glad because I didn’t have anything for him. And that morning a dozen other kids whom I’d never considered friends–casual acquaintances at best–handed me Valentine’s Day cards. I felt like a schmuck, but the day after Valentine’s Day I felt a little better about going to school.