False Spring

I don’t trust the weather.

It has ulterior motives. It plunges the Midwest into a long, dreary winter, promising a frozen tundra for five months at least. But then there are weeks like this. Little blips of spring weather that arrive with all of the hopes and dreams of summer.

Premature weeks of spring during the college years ride in on a chariot of light jackets, frat boys drinking on balconies, and chill Frisbee playing on any patch of grass big enough to fit a pair of Birkenstocks. These weeks allow students to be lulled into a false sense of happiness and joy. The sun comes out and the pasty, vitamin D deficient students come crawling out of the dorm rooms and basements they’ve been trapped in since November. They turn their faces up to the sky reveling in the lack of below zero wind chills and saunter to class, freed of the fifty layers of clothing that previously were needed to maintain a normal body temperature.

A general sense of glee fills the campus. Smiles are much more freely given, but it’s hard to tell if that’s just because it is possible to feel your face when you’re outside or because everyone is really, actually, finally happy about the weather.

I am loving the warmth. The lake is melting, my cheeks are sunburned and I haven’t worn wool socks since last week, but it seems too good to be true. I can’t help but feel like this is all a cruel joke. It’s way too early in the semester to be having weather like this.  If it keeps up how will I be able to sit in a library, surrounded by a fortress of books for hours on end when I know I could be curled up in a sunny nook reading Pride and Prejudice? I want to go biking through the Arboretum not doing a research paper on it.

But if it doesn’t keep up being warm like it is now, how will the student body react? Once you’ve put on a sundress and started buying iced coffee instead of peppermint mochas at Starbucks there’s no turning back. I refuse to put my Bean Boots in the back of my closet. Partially because they were back ordered and I’ve only been able to wear them since mid February, BUT MAINLY because I don’t trust the weather. I will not be lulled into a false sense of security that winter is over and summer will be here shortly. I won’t be caught off guard like the rest of these suckers. I’m expecting another full out snowstorm before spring is here for real.

I might be a pessimist.

But I’m mainly just a Wisconsinite.