I met my mom over lunch today. Through some freak coincidence or twist of fate she works across the street from my office in Manhattan and we get to touch base on a weekly basis, far less of a hassle than it used to be when my father insisted on meeting me for noon lunches when I had to be at work at 7:30pm and noon was an hour short of a full REM cycle.
She handed over some paperwork I needed, a train ticket for an upcoming weekend in DC and, as we both had time to kill and didn't want to have that kind of parent/child relationship, the kind that defaults to "just business" after the age of 25, we talked about what people talk about when they have nothing to talk about - we talked about the weather.
The weather's been weird recently. Call it global warming or an environmental adjustment, call it a rainy day in Mr. Rodgers' neighborhood or El Nino, call it whatever you'd like, but meteorologists have been having a tough time figuring out what's gonna happen between the sky and the ground recently. Today was supposed to be cloudy and overcast with torrential downpours starting at 1pm; at 1pm exactly, the sun broke through the clouds and made me instantly uncomfortable in my leather coat, a coat that was entirely necessary when I left the house at 8:30 this morning. It's been odd out in the world.
When I was a kid, a little kid, I was in love with Lloyd Lindsay Young, the weatherman on our local news show. He had the most amazing voice, a voice that wouldn't've sounded at all out of place coming out of the mouth of a muppet (the bulk of my TV time, at the time) and it was a fun name to say. Woyd Windsay Wung. Awesome.
One winter's night, Wung described the night's upcoming weather as bleak indeed - snow, feet-worth, hiding mailboxes and cars, an act of god from start to finish. He leaned in close at the end of his report and, it seemed, looked me in the eye, said, "So, boys and girls, when you wake up in the morning, the world is gonna be covered in snow." Yessir.
I went to bed excited and woke up early, ran to our high apartment window, climbed up onto the toy chest that I used to sit on and looked down to the street.
And as my mom described it over lunch, I looked back at her over my shoulder, my eyes big as saucers and shocked.
"Mama? Woyd Windsay Wung WIED."
I've never trusted weathermen. S'good to know why.
Woyd Windsay Wung in action, if you're curious.
And okay, NOW it's raining.