Since my last Blog, we experienced the great “white out” here in Dallas. With a record-setting snow of over a foot and no snow removal equipment, we had the perfect formula for a traffic nightmare in the DFW area. As someone who grew up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, I have some experience with driving in the snow. My father took me out early in my driving career and taught me how to steer into the slide. But I decided it was best to stay off the road last week since it appears that many native and imported Texans are not very familiar with these driving concepts. Fortunately, the temps rose and the white stuff disappeared within a few days, but while it was around, the snow was pretty to look at and it was the number one topic of conversation in the neighborhoods.
That got me to thinking about why people always talk about the weather. In a situation like the recent record-setting snowfall, it is understandable. Storms like that don’t come along very often, but it doesn’t take records to get Americans talking about the weather. We do it all the time. In fact, I think it is a national past time. Why is that?
I think to a large extent, it is a way for us to connect with other people. It’s a means of conversation about a non-threatening subject. You are pretty safe in talking with someone about the weather. They are not likely to take offense or get up in arms about it – as opposed to say, politics, religion, sports, or just about anything else where you could be on the wrong side of that conversation. And it is something you can do with people you don’t even know. You can encounter someone in the elevator or standing in line at the store and have no problem with making eye contact with them and saying something about the weather, like “can you believe this heat?” or “we’re gonna have to start using boats pretty soon if it doesn’t stop raining!”
Now on the surface these conversations may seem trivial, but underneath they are the way that we can relate with others and share in our common human experience. Regardless of one’s income level or position in life, we all occupy the same planet and experience the same weather where we live. It’s one of the few things that binds us as a community.
I don’t know if people in other countries are as obsessed with weather talk as we are here in America. I would guess that maybe part of that comes from our agrarian background as a country. If you grow crops, you are pretty interested in what the weather is going to bring. But like most things American, we probably take it to a whole other level. I think we invented the Weather Channel, didn’t we? I recently read that the number one iPhone app is looking up the weather.
Man has always dreamed about controlling the weather. I don’t know if that is ever going to be possible. If we ever succeed – what are we going to talk about?
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