It takes a special kind of person to thrive when it’s 12 degrees — a person not from Miami

By the time you read this, I will have rung in 2010 aboard a jet bound for Miami International Airport. Hopefully. (Had to say that, seeing as how I prepare to die every time I get on a plane, and I don’t assume anything in this life. Plus I’m superstitious.) By the time you read this, I will be back in my homeland for an undetermined amount of time.

My first thought this morning when I glanced at the thermometer: “12 is a shoe size for basketball players, not a temperature.” Alas, my sunnified, subtropical friends, indeed it is a temperature and you can bet one thing: It will keep dropping. In fact last winter I saw minus 12. And they say it was a mild one.

The weather report called for a “Windy and Wintry Mix.” Wintry Mix. Sounds like a seasonal appetizer plate. “Waiter! Yes, I’ll have the Wintry Mix!” Chunks of thawed and then fried road kill. A slice of roadway with glacial garnish, topped with a sprinkle of coarse salt? De-icer fluid dip with a side of brittle twigs?

And so it begins. Last winter I thought it a viable option to plunge my Subaru into the Susquehanna River. The Subaru is king up here in the Merciless Frozen Tundra because it works in snow and ice. The vehicle might keep you alive. I am aware that in the MIA, Porsches, Escalades, Audis, Mercedes convertibles are the preferred wheels. Here people are less picky. They want to survive. And none of those fancy cars are going to help you get traction when the road is a slick runway of death.

So when considering daily MFT runway o’ death or the airport’s runway o’ death, I chose to fly south.

Not that Miami doesn’t have its runways o’ death. Pick any road -- I-95, the Palmetto, Biscayne Boulevard, Calle Ocho. As I drive on these wintry Danger Mouse roads here, I often find myself wondering WWMD? What Would Miamians Do? Seriously. I can’t even imagine the carnage and mayhem if the 305 had to deal with snow/icy roads.

Look, I can say it because I’m a native. (Sort of like it’s okay to call your sister horrible names and beat her into submission because she’s your sibling.) Miami is wonderful for many reasons. But common sense and intelligence are not among them.

Back when my father taught at the University of Miami, everyone called it “Suntan U,” and not just because the sun was shining. No, there seemed to be a lack of…what? Work ethic? Drive? Whatever it was, it still prevails. The sun. It makes you soft. And you can’t fight it any more than you can fight the MFT winter.

This marshmallowing of the brain, it’s the fate of all who spend too much time in sunny places. Face it, Miamians: You’re a bunch of pussies. I know. I’m one too. Which is why I am heading back to the warm womb.

To be fair, as I’m an equal-opportunity call-it-like-I-see-it type of woman, the MFTers are also pussies. You see, it all boils down (during Miami summers, you can take that literally) to the environment in which you grew up. While Miamians shake out the moth balls and dust off their fur or faux fur coats when the thermometer dips below 70, people in the MFT start sweating at exactly same temperature. It’s just the way we’re made.

I’ll tell you who is not a pussy, though: Irish Helen. My neighbor Irish Helen is one MFTer I like. Irish Helen possesses what one might call “vim and vigor.” She has a great knack for saying “Bah!” while dismissively waving her hand.

This is a woman in her mid-60s (I’m guessing here) who keeps her house at 65 degrees -- when she’s in it. Always. I’ll bet it’s at 65 right now, while my thermo still (!!!) reads 12. Her husband does not like it, she says. But he’d just better bundle up! (To give you an idea what this housing temperature means to me: When Jeremy and I went on vacation recently, we set the temperature to 68. Well, there are furry children to consider.)

Irish Helen also does not believe in hats. Hats are for sissies!

My school friend Tim is nothing like Irish Helen, yet they do share one thing in common: Tim is another MFTer who doesn’t believe in hats, even at minus 12.

I love Tim, too. He’s barely 20-years-old, born in Vestal, a suburb of Binghamton, NY, which rather unfortunately makes him not just a MFTer but also a Vestilian. However, I am convinced this is all a mistake, a switching at birth, if you will. Tim does not exhibit typically annoying Vestilian MFT traits such as shuffling his feet or dropping his consonants, and he still has all his teeth.

But Tim still cannot completely escape his roots. Last night was a good example.

There we are, standing outside the building where we’d just concluded the semester of DPI, or Digital Photographic Imaging. (DPI is really an acronym for YAGSTS, or You Are Going to Suffer This Semester.) So anyway, I am in a three-quarter, “mulberry pink,” down-filled coat, under which there are two layers -- one shirt and one sweater -- jeans, high boots, two pairs of socks (first cotton, then wool; it must be done that way), and mittens.

Tim is wearing what has come to be his class uniform: a thin pair of sweat pants, a tissue-weight white T-shirt, a barely-there hoodie, possibly underwear, and running shoes. I do not know if there were socks.

Tim and I are trying to get through a congratulatory cigarette, but damn! It is cold. And I stupidly opted to wear a bopping reindeer headband, so I am hatless. I don’t know the temperature but I know it is ominous. (I now can tell the difference between cold and ominous, and we had already passed the “o” mark).

It had been snowing at 5:00 p.m. when I crunched my car wheels into a snowy, illegal parking spot, and now it is 9:00 p.m. We’ve been outside for four minutes and I can no longer feel my ears. Then the wind comes. I start howling. But Tim just stands there.

Me: Oh my gawwwwd! Ahhh! What the???? Tim! How can you just stand there like that? Eeeeeeeeeeeee!

Tim (calmly): I am clenching my ass cheeks together so I don’t scream.

And there you have it. The heart of the MFT spirit. Ass-clenching will power. Hat disdain. Bah! I see it in Irish Helen. I see it in Tim. And I respect it in both. But I do not want to see myself in it the rest of this winter.

They can eat the Wintry Mix platter. I’m ordering the subtropical special.

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