Hurricane season ends. The ants trudge into battle with us for dominance of our homes and foodstuffs. And then… the temperature drops. Bermudians simply lose their minds.
It’s funny how it happens in every normally warm place in the world. When you are used to a certain thing, when it changes, it can actually be quite confusing. Remember, a couple of years ago, when it snowed like an inch or two in Atlanta? The whole state practically closed up shop! In a way, it is understandable. That town was so not prepared for the extreme of snow.
Bermuda, however, Bermuda is a whole ‘nother story. We really should expect the weather change. We really should expect ants marching two by two into our houses with metaphorical pitchforks. We really should expect the freezing rain. I mean, it happens EVERY year. And we simply don’t. To be fair, we don’t expect the hot weather either. “How is it this hot?!? I swear it’s hotter this year than it was last year!” Yeah right. We just don’t like change. Even expected change.
With the weather, Bermudians usually go one of two ways. There’s the move into boots, down jackets and scarves the minute the temperature drops five degrees. And then there are the ‘I love cold weather’ nuts (can you guess which group I might be in?). I totally get the whole bundle thyself up and wait out the winter people. I sleep with a large flannel blanket in the middle of summer. During the winter? Oh, I sleep so ensconced in blankets that all you can see is the top of my head. I started wearing my onesie mid-October. Cold is so NOT my natural state of being. If I could figure out how to walk around with a personal space heater, yeah, that’ll work. It’s the skip merrily into the freeze with a maniacal grin on their faces people I don’t get. I get that we are a sub-tropical island but jeez, I kinda thought the ‘sub’ was a suggestion. We have palm trees. No place with palm trees should have cold weather. Why would anyone think that is a preferable state to the sun shining its heat over your skin? Cold weather fans start murmuring how happy they are that summer is over and I thought it was going to be hot forever (yes, please!). But I suppose if me and those like me get our favourite, so should they. I just wish it was a lot shorter. A week should do it…
With the ants, well, we never really win that battle, do we? They let us think we do but we don’t. When you least expect it, you come into your living room to find that a crumb your children dropped the night before being swarmed by like 800 million ants. I’m not sure how they manage to mobilize 800 million ants in the space of a couple of hours but it happens. I can’t mobilize two children in the morning without copious bribes and at least one spate of crying (obviously, that would be me). I’ve seen ants carry other ants like soldiers piggyback riding. I can’t get my son to carry one Matchbox car to the box he took it out of hours earlier. Now that I think about it, the ants probably deserve the house. They are better men than we ever will be…
The seasons change. The weather changes. The whole world changes from day to day. But Bermudians? The one thing that we can be assured of is the fact that what never really changes is our ability to go through life’s many changes with a skip in our step and a smile on our faces (if you could see my face under the scarf).
