I really hate being cold. Hate, hate, hate it. I would much rather be too hot than too cold. Being too hot can definitely suck, but I find it to be extremely uncomfortable, whereas being too cold is downright painful. It penetrates your body and gets inside your bones, freezing the marrow. There are times I've been so cold I wanted to die. I wished for death. I hate that kind of cold like I hate genital warts. I angrily curse God, demanding to know "Why me?!?"
So it's a little weird that last night I found myself freezing, but uncharacteristically happy and reminiscient. I was sitting in the upper box at Monster Park in San Francisco. My girlfriend had gotten us tickets to the Niners-Bengals game for my birthday, so we flew up for the night. I was wearing my 49ers sweater, beanie and gloves, but, having lived here in Los Angeles for ten years, I had forgotten how downright miserably cold Candlestick gets at night. And that was usually in April, when my dad would take me to Giants games in the middle of the week and I'd be the only business the chocolate malt guy would get all night. This is December.
Anyway, there we were, freezing our nuts off (yeah, she's got a pair), and at one point a serene calmness came over me. I mentally flashed back to my childhood, and suddenly I was on the little league baseball field somewhere in the Presidio. The same unbearable freezer burn enveloped my face as I stood out by second base, praying for a strikeout so I could run off to my dad's car and put my hands over the heating vent.
I guess as I get a little bit older (I'll be 29 in a couple weeks), I get more nostalgic when these types of memories surface in my brain. It happens less and less as more and more time fills the void between then and now, so I tend to dwell on it when it happens. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my Niners also seemed to be flashing back, playing like the winning machine I was raised with, putting a hurt on Cincinnati like they did in two Super Bowls in the 80's. But for a couple hours last night, the San Francisco cold temporarily froze all the stresses of my adulthood and truly chilled me out.
