Hibernation BFG’s

When I first moved to South Dakota in June of 1981, we lived in a hotel for three months while our house was being built. Living in a hotel for three months was awesome for a bitter 8-year-old. My dad’s company paid for everything, so we got to eat breakfast at the hotel every morning. I literally memorized our breakfast number (Mine was #18, 2 eggs, 2 bacons, and 2 toasts) and the waitress was like our new aunt. Since we got to eat out every night, we just started calling 49th street in town Restaurant Row, because that was where all the restaurants were.

We got to go swimming every day, we had free cable TV, and we never had to make our beds. It was a pretty great summer. Unfortunately, our house finally got finished, so we had to move out of the hotel and into our house. My mother never learned to do #18 on the menu, there was no pool in our backyard, and we were stuck with 3 stupid channels on TV. It was also the fall, so we had to go to school.

School sucked in South Dakota, because as soon as fall started, the weather got much colder, and by the time late October hit, it was snowing, and misery set in for the next 6 months. In fact, the first year we lived there, one day it was literally -80 below zero windchill. I remember reading the Argus Leader, the paper of record there, and it said we set some sort of record. Whenever my parents said how good we had it, I would always remind them that they sent us to school in that weather. Obviously, there was no recess that day. The bus driver had to deliver us to the door, because if he didn’t, we would’ve been popsicles for the bears to eat.

Actually, as you know, bears would not be lined up to eat us, because, as you know, bears hibernate. According to AI, bears start hibernation around October, and don’t come out of hibernation until around April, or when the snow starts to melt.

If you’ve ever met a bear, they are really quite harmless.

Yogi Bear is pretty great. Yeah, he walks on two feet, and is always hungry, but all he wants to do is eat your pic-a-nic basket, not you. He hangs out with an even more harmless bear named Boo-Boo. He is a bit of a theif, but nothing major.

Winnie-the-Pooh is also pretty harmless. He lives in a tree, and doesn’t eat people either, just honey. He is friends with creatures that aren’t bears which is weird, but good on him for having a diverse friend group. He’s also friends with a human named Christopher, which is cool, I guess.

There is Fozzie Bear, a stand-up comedian, who is friends with a singing frog, a thing named Gonzo, who I’m not sure what the heck he is, and a pig. Seems like bears don’t really hang out with bears that much now that I think of it.

There is Ted, who is best friends with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Baloo who is friends with a human named Mowgli, and the Care Bears who somehow have evolved into taking on different colors than the typical black and brown bears and have colors like yellow, pink, blue, and purple. They like to wear badges on their stomachs.

There are some other famous Bears like Walter Payton, Mike Singletary, Jim McMahon and Caleb Williams. They like hanging out with pig skins and tackling each other. I guess not all bears are nice.

Besides, being pretty nice to all kinds of animals and people, there is one thing about bears that I am quite envious of. I’m not sure why we haven’t adapted the same philosophy as them.

They hibernate. Don’t get me wrong. As humans, we are pretty decent at taking short two-hour naps on the couch every once in a while, and sometimes, we’re even allowed a 4-5 hour sleep at night when we get to bed around midnight.

But we need to start adapting to the way of the bears. Before when I was mentioning living in South Dakota and it was -80 degrees outside? There is no reason we should ever be outside in insanly cold weather like that. I’m pretty sure Santa Claus doesn’t even get temperatures at the North Pole that cold.

There is no business being outside when it doesn’t get light until 8:30 am and gets dark at 5:15 pm in the winter. Why are we working any time after Halloween? We should all get our nice winter caps out, pull up in our beds, or caves and not come out until the snow is melting. Yeah, it might be 70 in California, Texas and Florida during the winter, but since none of us in the North want to do anything but nap during the winter, how about we just take that time off to hibernate?

It seems like I never get anything productive done in the winter anyways. Everyone is always sick in the winter, passing around the flu, and colds, and the snifflies and the coughing and the sneezing. We should just sleep through all the time and then we will be way more productive in the spring and summer. Well, after all the partying and going to the lake and stuff. But there is probably a month or two every year where we can dedicate ourselves to doing work or something.

I just think that we need to learn a thing or two from bears. They know that winter and cold sucks, so they go into their caves. We should do the same. I will even build myself a man cave in which I have my video games, and big screen TV in case I wake up a little too early in March and you guys are all still sleeping in until May.

What is the greatest nation in the World? That’s right Hiber Nation.

When we do wake up in April or May, we should definitely do what the bears do when they wake up. They grab a pic-a-nic basket, eat some honey, do some stand-up comedy and then go care about some people or something. Although you know that I’m more of a Bitter Bear, so I might go around being bitter about people.

Did you know there are some certain species of bears we’ve never discovered before? They are called introvert bears. Even though they are awake, they prefer to not wander in the wilderness, but they like to stay in their caves, reading, writing, scouring the internet, avoiding parties, and small talk. They are my kind of bear. I want to meet one once, but on the other hand, I don’t, because I want to respect their privacy.

I also like to stay in my cave and rarely venture out, just like the introvert bear.

Now, all we need to do is end this post with some Bitter Friday Giftures and this will be a beary good post indeed.

When I first moved to South Dakota…