toques, cool kids & the Biebs

It’s -5°C today in Vancouver, though with the windchill it feels more like -15°C.  And depending on who you ask it might as well be -50°C because imagining anything colder than this is insane.  Basically we west coasters are the weather weenies of Canada and I’m sure the butt of many an Inuit joke.

Driving back from the store, I watched the teenagers coming home from school.  They didn’t have toques, gloves, coats or anything my mother would refer to as “sensible clothing” on.  

Instead I watched one lanky guy try to casually brace himself against the wind wearing a fitted hoody & baseball cap with a perpetual Bieber-hair-flick twitch, oblivious to the 40 km/h winds already giving his hair a windswept look.  In his attempt to appropriate the Biebs style I’m sure it never occurred to him that Justin is from Stratford, Ontario and has probably worn his share of bulky snowsuits & unflattering jackets.

Watching this from inside my car, heat blaring, I realized 2 things.  First, that I am now a grown up as defined by the fact that I would rather be warm than look cool.  And second, that I’m glad to have come of age in the 90s when flannel shirts, layers & toques were in style.

*note: to those who refuse to join us in the metric system, that would be 23°F actual temp & 5°F with the windchill.