Frostbite is For Real

I remember the time I got frostbite like it was yesterday.  I was in junior high.  I had a blue puffer jacket that snapped up the front.  I loved that jacket.  I left the house that morning, and my mom asked me, "Aren't you going to wear a hat?"  I told her I didn't need one.  The truth was that I didn't want to wear my hat. My mom had bought me this really cute knit hat with faux fur around the edge with matching gloves and a matching scarf.  The gloves had faux fur around the cuff, and the scarf was a plain knit scarf.  When I wore the hat to school, the kids on the bus made fun of me and asked me how many rabbits I killed to wear that hat.  I quit wearing the hat. I went to school that morning having convinced myself I didn't really need the hat anyway.  I had heard about frostbite, but I never thought it would happen to me.  I thought it was just something adults used to scare kids into wearing hats and gloves when they didn't want to.

That November day, our class was released from school an hour early because we had won the food drive for the junior high.  Everyone was very excited about leaving early.  I, on the other hand, did not get to go home early.  My mom and dad were at work, and I had to wait for the bus to arrive.  I stood inside the doors of the junior high until the last kid's parents picked her up.  I stood there pretending like I was waiting for someone to come pick me up, even though I knew no one was coming.  After she had left, I tried to decide how long I was going to stand there waiting.  I thought maybe I would wait until someone else came by and saw me.  That didn't take very long.  I stood there for five or ten minutes, at the most, until someone came by, looked my direction and walked away.  Embarrassed, I walked out into the cold and gray.

It was a typical November day in Iowa.  The ground was covered with snow.  Some had melted and turned to ice, so it was ice on top of snow on top of ice.  It was one of the days where you couldn't decide which was colder, the ground or the air.  The sky was cloudy and gray, and the wind was blowing.  The wind felt like icy air blowing against my face.  It was the type of cold that it doesn't matter what the temperature is any more because you know that it is below freezing.  In Iowa, with the wind chill factor, the temperature was most likely subzero that day.

I decided to walk the few blocks from the junior high to the high school to the bus barn.  It was a short walk, and I figured it would take up some time.  I had an hour until the bus would take me home.  I walked along the icy, snowy sidewalks in my hometown as the wind blew against my ears.  I had my puffer coat collar turned up, so the bottom of my earlobes were covered.  I thought I would be okay with the top of my ears being covered by my hair.  I was wrong.  As I walked, I could feel my ears getting colder and colder.  I had my hands stuffed deep into my pockets, so they would stay warm.  Occasionally, I would pull them to check on them to see just how cold they were.

At first, I thought to myself, the walk wasn't so bad.  That was the first block.  The longer I was outside, though, the more the wind whipped around my head, bearing down on the top of my ears, which were feeling colder and colder every minute.  I tried distracting myself by looking at the trees, or the snow on the ground, or the football field -- barren and waiting for track season to start in the spring.  It seemed like an eternity before I reached the bus barn, but it was probably only 15 or 20 minutes. When I arrived, I stood there by myself in the middle of all of the buses.  I felt the cold all through my clothes, through my jeans, through my coat, through my bones. After a while, I saw my former bus driver come out and start up her bus.  She sat there for what seemed like ten minutes warming up her bus, looking at me.  It probably was only a minute or two.  She asked me if I wanted to come sit down on the bus and wait.  I quietly climbed the stairs and found a seat near the front of the bus.  When school was officially out, I would have to change buses.  I sat on the bus waiting to go home, shivering, and thankful for the warmth.  I barely remembered the ride home from school that day, exhausted from walking in the cold.

When I got home that day, my ears felt like they were burning and freezing all at the same time.  They hurt, too. It was a prickly pain and a pain like someone -- mother nature -- had hit me in the ears. I cautiously went into my parents' bathroom and looked in the mirror.  My ears were red and puffy and blistered from the earlobe up.  They were painful to touch.  The bottom half of my ears that my coat had covered were pink and healthy.  I knew what had happened.  I had frostbite.  That was my first lesson that I was no match for an Iowa winter. I spent the following weeks taking care of my ears, putting hot wash cloths on them, applying aloe cream, and eventually peeling away the dead skin.  I had learned my lesson, though. I learned not to go out in the Iowa cold without a hat on...or gloves for that matter.  To this day, even if it is a slightly cool day of 55 with a mild wind, I still need to cover my ears.  They are still sensitive to the cold.