It's All Relative

45 degrees and sunny; how does that weather report affect our outdoor plans? Well, that all depends. If it’s the middle or end of summer, we react one way and if it’s towards the end of winter, we behave in yet another way. If we happen to be in Florida or the southwest for a break from the cold New England winter, we have an entirely different reaction. We just can’t seem to make up our minds!

45 degrees late in the summer or even early in the autumn brings out the sweaters and light jackets, moves cookouts indoors, has us all checking the trees to see if they’ve started turning, and makes us wonder if the snow blower needs a tune-up before we roll it out for the impending, dreaded onslaught of winter. Smiles turn to frowns, spirits dampen and way too many folks begin a slow withdrawal into a place only they can go. 45 degrees is cold!

If you were a fly on the wall when one of us snowbirds crawls out of our Florida or Arizona motel room only to find the temperature is not quite the 80 degrees we came looking for, you’d probably walk away shaking your head and you would be armed with an expanded vocabulary. Who wants to spend the day at the theme park wearing Bermudas, flip-flops, and a light shirt when it’s only 13 degrees above freezing? The water rides would be a blast, right? Who wants to wear that same outfit playing a round of golf or sitting in the shade at a spring training baseball game. (darn it, you came expecting warm weather and you did not bring heavier clothes. If you wanted to wear heavy clothes you would have stayed home!). Shoot, who wants to attend any outdoor event when the thermometer is that low? You just spent who knows how much money to escape winter and 45 degrees isn’t going to cut it!

Now cut and paste the 45 degree report onto a day in early March, especially someplace like as ski resort, and observe how human nature has a totally different look. All of a sudden, jackets come off, sometimes even down to the t-shirt or tank top level , decks are packed with people just coming out of hibernation who can’t get enough of the “warm sun.” The grill has been moved from inside the ski lodge to the patio or a deck and the smell of burgers, onions and peppers is everywhere. Hot coffee and tea is replaced by mugs of ice cold beer, as if core temperatures were nearing the boiling point. Frowns melt into smiles, cheery voices magically reappear and everyone is happy to be free of the cabin fever they’ve endured for several months. Boy, are they going to be disappointed when the temperatures dip and we get the inevitable April snow storm! But right now 45 degrees is warm!

So why is it 45 means something different when it really never changes? My non-scientific answer is it all depends on where we’ve been and where we’re going. Get used to something and any change is as much a matter of perception as it is reality. Call it a frame of mind, call it expectations, call it what you want. It’s all relative.