I have seen more snow in the past week than Ted Cruz. Normally this wouldn’t be saying much, as Cruz, like me, is from Texas, but given the circumstances, it is deeply upsetting. I don’t know what Ted was expecting to come out of a trip to Cancun during a debilitating Texas snowstorm.
As someone who boasted to my college friends every day about the beautiful weather I was experiencing over the break, I have experienced hate for being in a warm climate while everyone else is freezing firsthand. The only difference here is that I have a legitimate reason to blame my family for my trip to a warm climate. Sure, Cruz’s daughters probably would have cried for a little bit if their beach trip was cancelled–if my dad was Ted Cruz, I’d want to cry too. If I wasn’t home for Christmas, though? My mother would be lamenting about that for years.
Ironically last week my family members back in Texas were just as concerned for me as I was for them. My dad sent me an article from CNN that claimed, “It will be so cold this weekend in the northern US, you could catch frostbite in less than 10 minutes.”My mom called me on the phone during a brief 5 minute interval of power.“Sweetie, if you want to move back home for college don’t worry about it just tell us,” she said. “I don’t want you to have to live like we are for the next four years.”
Weather that was once unimaginable to my loved ones was suddenly tangible to them, as a fierce snow and ice storm swept through Texas, and all of the sudden my Texas family members thought I, a college student on the frequently-snowy East Coast, was a warrior of the tundra. On Wednesday a friend of mine from high school’s Instagram story read, “Northerners, how do you do it?”. As a Texan currently dealing with the same weather in the North that Texans are dealing with in Texas, I can assure you that we are not the problem. In fact, I would argue that Texans are tougher when it comes to handling the cold than Northerners are. People on the East Coast have their Canada Goose jackets and hand warmers to help them cope with 20-degree weather. For the few days out of the year that Texas is afflicted with cold weather, people just throw on a jean jacket and call it a day. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my jean jacket when traveling to Vassar, but I’ll figure out a way to cope.