Proving Josh's Point (in a Polar Vortex)
a creative writing edition (#14)
This is paywalled, so housekeeping first.
Lots of pictures in this post, so your email client may not handle it well. You can also read it at the Substack website.
This is the fourteenth edition of a creative writing feature for paid subscribers, who are also able to comment on this post (and most posts). If you would like a paid subscription but can’t afford it, send an email to hollymathnerd at gmail dot com and I’ll hook you up with a free year.
Context: since I started this feature, I usually put weird or interesting (or potentially interesting, anyway) little stories here. It feels like the “creative writing” construct frees me from needing to do a proper introduction, thesis, supporting point, supporting point, conclusion, etc., structure.
That’s all this is — a story of a small adventure in a polar vortex.
Murphy Was Wiser Than Socrates…
“I know that I know nothing.” —Socrates
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong—and at the worst possible time.” —Murphy’s Law
…And My Friend Josh? Wiser Than Murphy.
My friend Josh Slocum is host of the Disaffected Podcast and writes a related Substack. He’s a fabulous human being, wicked smart and hilarious. He is my role model for personal responsibility. I’d trust him with my life, my unlocked phone, or a list of my passwords.
One of the ways that “privilege” is a thing is surely friend privilege, and I am privileged to call him my friend.
Josh has a regular rant, one I’ve heard many times, about modern over-reliance on electronics. He wrote about it just ten days ago, in fact.
I got my first late-model car a couple of months ago, and for the first time was faced with things like a backup camera, having my car tell me the speed limit and alert me to lane markers, and the other ways that late-model cars do some of the driving for us.
When Josh taught me how to drive in snow, he explained how over-reliance on such things would degrade my driving skills over time. Yes, my hearing makes the backup camera a special boon to me, but it’s still very important to physically turn my head and look, every time, so that I never lose that habit.
Likewise, it was one thing to have the car alert me to lane markers, but I should not allow the setting where it would move the wheel. I and I alone should be in charge of the car.
We’ve also discussed, at length, the way that modern washing machines are overly computerized and feature, like most electronic gadgets, planned obsolescence. Josh went to great lengths to secure for his home an older, used washing machine that would last.
I had an adventure this morning that proved the wisdom of his position.
The Polar Vortex
Last night, when I went outside to warm up my car, the temperature was -22 degrees, Fahrenheit. The windchill was -49 degrees. I staggered all the way to my car, trying to not be blown off course by ferocious winds.
I was wearing two pairs of thermal underwear, jeans, two pairs of socks, two short-sleeved shirts, one long-sleeved shirt, an oversized hoodie, gloves, mittens, the hood of the hoodie, a scarf over my face, thick winter boots, and a hat.
My boots and mittens had been warmed up for thirty minutes with electric hand warmers, on high, inside them before I put them on to go outside. (The electric hand warmers, by the way, are fabulous and happen to be 50% off today.)
The wind was so ferocious that my teeth were chattering and I had goosebumps all over my body before I got to my car. I added a third set of thermal underwear before I returned to my car to go to my appointment.
After several months of barely-above-freezing, barely-any-snowfall, we are finally having a real New England winter.
The Epic Tale of the Heater in My Apartment
My apartment is about half the top floor of a very old Victorian mansion. The couple who own the house are older, and remodeled part of their house into a rental unit as retirement income. They are not bad people, by any means, but the husband has one character defect that affects everything.
He is a penny pincher to the point of making asinine decisions. “Penny wise and pound foolish” was surely coined with him, or someone exactly like him, in mind.
I moved into the apartment in August 2021. When the gas company came to turn on the gas so I could have hot water, they notified him that the heater didn’t pass inspection and he’d have to replace it.
That sounds simple enough, right?
Heh.