By Jim Hagarty
2005
For a thousand reasons, my great-grandfather, who emigrated from Ireland to Canada in the 1850s, would be beyond shock if he could return to our world for a day and witness us all in action. Airplanes flying overhead, electric lights, automobiles, TVs, radios, computers. People talking to each other on little wireless hand-held devices that can perform a dozen functions including snapping pictures. Drive-through restaurants.
But I think the thing that might most leave him bewildered – as it is, at present, confusing his great-grandson – is the way people dress for winter these days. Keeping warm in winter in this part of the world a century and a half ago was a major preoccupation. It involved cutting down a lot of trees, starting a lot of fires, and most importantly, bundling up in lots of clothes, especially heavy duty underwear that covered not only the groinal area, but the full length of the arms and legs too.
City dweller that I now am, I admit that it’s been many a year since I’ve pulled on a pair of “long johns” but old habits die hard and I still bundle up pretty snugly whenever I go outside. This is why I nearly flipped when I was coming out of a store the other day – winter hat firmly pulled down, coat done up to my chin, heavy gloves on my hands – to see a young man strolling along in a T-shirt and light jacket, running shoes and – summer shorts. A guy walking along in sub-zero weather like he was on a beach is a sight that I thought I’d never see. And I don’t think great-grandpa could have handled it any better than I did.
The only reason I raise the subject is that this is the third time this winter I have witnessed such a thing. The first time was downtown a few weeks back when a man well past his teenage years went sauntering down the street in shorts as though he was cruisin’ the strip at a popular lakeside town in July. Another time, I saw a man in a muscle shirt and no coat, braving the winter chill like a penguin from the bottom of the globe.
I don’t know whether three such sightings constitute a fashion trend, but if it does, it will be one – like body piercings and tattoos – that I will be foregoing (and you are surprised to know this). As it is, it has to be a pretty hot day for me to wear a pair of legless pants outside. I am sure great-grandpa never once did even that. The black flies of the still-wooded part of Canada he lived in would have eaten him alive had he tried. In any case, I’m sure the morality of the times would have prevented him from doing so. Exposed skin was the devil’s workshop in the 1800s.
I’ve taken a quick poll around the newsroom where I work and I am not the only one to have seen scantily clad men braving winter. One, apparently, even ventures out in shorts and “flip-flops” on his sockless feet.
So many days I remember working outside on the farm in winter when the only thing that stood between me and death by hypothermia was flapping my arms around my shoulders and moving back and forth from foot to foot to keep the blood flowing.
Looking at it from a whole new perspective, I would have enjoyed standing beside a guy in flip-flops and shorts; I’m sure I would have felt absolutely boiling in comparison.
