Kickass and Wind Chill by Bill Stokes

Attribution: Oregon Department of Transportation, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Bill Stokes

Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis will be –in military terms, “confined to quarters” until the temperature and the wind speed produce a wind chill factor that would not freeze the ba….. (The complete metaphor uses the words “brass monkey” and dates from before the use of “wind chill” as a misery measurement.)

Having faced a mile and a half of northern Wisconsin west wind on the daily slog to a country school in the pre “wind chill” days, the keeper suspects that he may have suffered permanent brain damage due to Mom and Dad not realizing that the cold weather risk extended beyond brass monkeys. The keeper developed severe sinus headaches that bedeviled him on into his Korean Army tour and required temporary hospitalization.

In retrospect, the keeper is put off by the ubiquitous use of the “wind chill index,” and he wishes he could go back to his country school days with the “brass monkeys.”