Saturday, February 23, 2013

You Know Who I'm Talking About...


Some people love their jobs, and some people hate their jobs, and some people love to make YOU hate their jobs. (Yes, that’s one more dig at power hungry TSA agents and local law enforcement, not that this is another one of THOSE blogs. I don’t fly again until April, though, so stay tuned.) No, today I’ve got a different target in my crosshairs – those men (because they’re always men) who love their jobs more than should legally be allowed in any state. (There are, of course, women in this profession, however, they always seem quite balanced.)

I don’t care if you live in New York City, Abilene Texas or Walla Walla, Washington. You’ve got one of these men in your area. I’m not sure why it’s always just ONE, but it is.  Perhaps there just isn’t enough oxygen in any given region for there to be two of them. This is actually a good thing. If there were two of them in a region, we might end up in some sci-fi paradox and the world would cease to exist. Each region gets only one. It’s some kind of law, I think.

You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?  A man who gets so excited about his job, it makes YOU a little uncomfortable watching him on TV in the privacy of your own home. I’m truly surprised more children don’t have nightmares about them like they do clowns because – honestly – they’re equally scary.

We got our first snowfall of the year a few weeks back. (I missed it as I was enjoying a nice cruise with Jerrica Knight-Catania and Catherine Gayle at the time. Yes, I’m rubbing it in.) Sometimes in Raleigh we only get one run-in with snow, sometimes we don’t get a run-in at all. So, I thought I’d missed all the wintery excitement this year, but I was wrong. We got a bit of snow this past weekend, and you’d think the world had come to a screeching halt. As Tes said earlier this week - in the south, the world shuts down for snow.  It’s just the way it is, and probably the way it will always be.

But that ONE man in our area always acts like the weather (whatever it may be) is THE singular most exciting, or scary event ever to occur. That’s right – I’m talking about your local weatherman. You know the one I mean. The ONE guy in your viewing area that gets a little wild-eyed and foamy about the mouth at the first sniff of cold air, or warm air, or wet air, or just about anything. This ONE guy loves his job more than everyone else in your viewing area combined loves theirs.

As I’ve said before – I’ve lived out West, the Midwest, the Southwest and now the Southeast.  And in each one of those places there was the ONE excitable weatherman who always seemed as though Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Mickey Mouse were waiting just off camera for him, waiting to high five him for his amazing delivery of the next day’s weathercast. He bounces a little too much in his shoes. He points at the map with a little too much vigor. And when he’s not  on the air, he LOVES breaking into scheduled programming at the drop of a hat.

He is your WEATHERMAN. The meteorologists at the other local networks are just pretenders, overshadowed by him. The other meteorologists at his own station are just poor substitutes until he’s back on the clock (always during primetime hours and occasionally in the morning, if he’s slumming it that day.)

And he totally and completely creeps me out.

Like I said, NO ONE SHOULD LOVE THEIR JOB AS MUCH AS THIS GUY DOES. Like it should be illegal in the lower 48. (I can see why someone might be excited about weather if they were in Hawaii or Alaska, but that’s beside the point.)  Instead of Santa Claus waiting off camera, I think there should be a psychiatrist waiting to administer a bit of valium as soon as he finishes his weather report. Being THAT excited cannot be good for his health, and it certainly isn’t good for MY mental health, and I’m just a viewer.

Watching him both exhausts and frightens me. I once found out I was attending the same boy scout event as our local WEATHERMAN, and I had to leave. Seeing him on TV is one thing, who knows what the man is capable of in real life!?! Honestly, I feel lucky to have gotten out alive.

What about you? What are your thoughts about your local crackpot…er…I mean…weatherman? Is he just as creepy as children's party clowns? Which one is scarier? Or is there someone even creepier than both, that I’ve somehow missed? 

Originally posted at LadyScribes Feb 22, 2013.

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