Thin Blood?

We're in the middle of a cold front here in the Tampa Bay area. No frontin. I'm talkin serious cold front. It's 44 degress outside right now. That's arctic for this area. It'll dip below 32 tonight, which means, in theory it could snow.

Sunday, I was coming back from the gym and I stopped into CVS to buy two pints of Haagen Daaz ice cream because I like to exert enrgy and spend time on things and then render them moot. I stepped into the store in just a jersey and T-shirt. It was about 50 outside. After my man Jerry the Register Man complimented me once again on my Daaz Game (i hit em with the English Tofee this time), he remarked "It's colder than a d*ck brick out there ain't it." I snapped out of the daze that "d*ck brick" put me in, stuck my nose in the air and said, "Come on on Jerrs, I'm from Buffalo, you know that. It's like a sauna out there."

"Well wait till you've been down here for 20 years like Ol' Jerry and your blood thins out. Then you'll be quivering just like me when you go out there. I got out the car and I darn near stuck my legs to my sack like a tongue to apole it was so cold out there." Again, he lost me.

But let's go back about a hlaf-scene...I don't get this whole "blodd-thinning" thing. Please, would some of my science geek friends that read books and stuff please get with me on this? Put Twist on to this blood-thinning thing, because it really makes no sense to me.

I mean, are you saying that human blood is, in fact, a substance that resembles a Sonic milk-shake or motor oil in viscosity; and that years in warm weather melts my blood and makes it thinner? This just doesn't make sense. So are Northerners more susceptible to blood clots, because the constant cold weather is freezing and thickening our blood like adding flour to butter and making a rue? So what you're saying is that Southerners have better blood circulation? because thinner blood should obviously circulate through our bodies better.

And what does this have to do with staying warm or getting cold? I always thought it had to do with skin and fat. That a fat person, no matter the weather, will stay warmer than a skinny person, since the fat person is insulated by layers of blubber, sticks of butter and undigested veal chops. Then there's thick skin. not the thick skin I get from spending close to 20 years having my closest of friends call me things like Vinny Tits or walking into a room of my bestest pals and having 63% of them greet me with things like, "Look at this fat dude." No that's figurative thick-skin, the kind that allows you laugh off ridicule and public, but vanishes in the privacy of your shower when you cry buckets of tears and beat your tits in lamentation.

No, not that type of thick skin. I guess, I thought that something happenned to your skin in prolonged exposure to cold weather, i dont know if its another layer or maybe the skin gets hardened or loses sensitivity or what it is, but I know this: I struggle to see how the consistency of our blood factors in. I mean, if some hobo hillbilly from Mobile scrapes his knee, does blood spill out like Kool-Aid? And if that's the case, if some polish sausage eatin rube from Illinois gets a fat-lip in a barfight, does blood ooze out of it like molasses or Heinz ketchup? And if this is case, which it probably isn't, how the heck does this effect how cold someone gets?

Help me, because I wasn't into books and reading and learning and stuff. Especially not science and things that hurt my brain. Matter fact, my biology class was one of those rare classes in school where the planets and class schedules aligned and almost every degenerate, disruptive, clown all got the same class. Mr. Geelan called us the Bonehead class, he did so with half affection and half exasperation.

I spent Biology doing one of three things, in particular order: 1) trying to bum 50 cent off a rich kid, a girl or someone i thought was mildly scared of me, so I could go buy a snicker. 2) writing a rhyme or drafting my personal All-American Team and then thinking of realistic ways to come up with stats for each of them that would keep their All-American status without having the squad score 120 pts/game...in 1994, my freshmen year when we took Biology, it was probably Big Dog, Donyell, Jalen, JKidd, Eddie Jones and Corliss. or 3). asking questions that had nothing to do with subject we were talking about, but somehow managed to come across as being earnest, which is why teachers rarely viewed me a simply a trouble-maker. Maybe the question was: "I don't get this blood thinning thing Mr. Geelan, it doesn;t make since to me. I mean, why does everyone make a big deal about thin this and thin that. Like, the other day Kenny Anderson was on Sports Center and he said they lost to the Denver Nuggest because the air was thin. What the heck is thin air? And what does it have to do with sea-levels? Do other places have fat air? Does Provo have fat air? Does Boston have fat air? Does Acapulco have fat air? And wouldn't it be easier to breathe in thin air than fat air? I'm sorry, Mr. Geelan, but science is stupid." That's when I'd turn to the class and say, "See yall, that's I'm not comin tomorrow. I'm gonna go to another lunch instead of comin hear and not learning anything. Maybe Ms. Lisa will give me some extra taters if I say something like, "Ms. Lisa you may be a 45-year-old, big ol' gospel church lookin woman, but gimme a 40 oz. and a few hallucinigens and I'd hit that."

So you see, science was never my thing, which is makin it hard for me to grasp this thin-blood madness without immediately disregarding it as rigamarol.

It's 44 degrees outside. I need to stop at my CVS to pick up some conditioner. If Jerry the Register Man says one word to me about d*ck bricks, I'm launching into a rambling diatribe similar to what I've just blogged.