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I Think My Principles Just Shrivelled Up Inside Me

Every once in a while, my principles come back to bite me in the ass.

Which is really damned annoying, of course, because I don’t have many principles to begin with. You’d think, with just one or two of the things lying around, they’d learn to stay out of the frigging way and be good. Hell, if I were them, and I’d seen so many of my kind yanked out and thrown away, I think I’d be just a tad nervous. Certainly, I’d try to keep my nose clean, my pants zipped, and not cause any undue hubbub.

Sadly, my few remaining principles don’t seem to share my caution. The bastards.

The latest of my personal policies to get all up in my business is this one: Many years ago, I decreed that once I start wearing shorts for the summer, then I’m not going to stop wearing shorts until the fall. See? It’s a principle. Seriously.

Of course, this little nugget didn’t come to me in Boston. No. When I came up with my principle — also known as the ‘Summer Shorts Manifesto’ — I was living in warmer climes. So all I had to do was wait until… oh, I don’t know, let’s say ‘late May’, to start wearing shorts, and then I’d be good to go until September or so, naked knees and all.

But Boston doesn’t work that way, folks. Boston weather is unpredictable, frequently messy, and often violent. Like a drunken longshoreman, maybe, or the after-effects of a bean burrito slathered with atomic sauce.

(Only cloudier. Or not, depending on the state of your digestive tract. Or possibly your ‘longshore’, assuming those are actually two different things. That’s never been made clear to me.)

Anyway, moving here to the near-Arctic hasn’t caused me to give up this little principle of mine. A lesser man might have punted, and decided that the temperature outside should dictate whether his thighs should be covered. Yes, a weaker man might’ve gone that route. As would a wiser man, probably. Not to mention a smarter man, a richer man, a younger man, a few hairier men, and that guy down the block with the lazy eye. And, more to the point, of course, a warmer man.

Come to think of it, just about any man — or woman — would probably have come to the conclusion that sub-fifty degree weather calls for long-style pantaloons. But not me. I’ve got principles.

(Hey, I never said I had good principles. They may not be the best, or the most important, or make any damned sense, but they’re the only ones I have. The only ones I can remember, anyway. That’ll have to do.)

In any event, I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m not budging. I pulled my short pants out of the drawer a couple of weeks ago when the mercury bubbled into the eighties, and dammit, I’m not putting them away until football season. Sure, I’ll bend a little — I’ll wear long-sleeved shirts, if I have to. I’ll wear wool socks with my shoes. And lord knows, I’ll slap on a hat, to keep that top-of-the-noggin heat in. But slip into a pair of jeans, in May, or June, or even August? No. Not gonna happen.

So, there you go. One of the few times that I buckle down and stick to my guns, and what does it get me? Chilly knees and a lot of funny looks from people in scarves and jackets. I don’t know how the hell people do this crap. Who can afford to have principles these days?

Now somebody get me a shawl, dammit. I think my ankles are frozen. Bah.