“This is why I live in a place where the air hurts my face.”

It’s a fairly common meme shared here in Canada: A photo of a giant snake, spider or some other tropical creepy-crawly with that quote pasted over it.

It suggests that dealing with a few months of cold weather is all fine and good because at least we don’t have those other things.

Sure. I get it. Snakes and spiders are scary.

But this weekend we’re going to see temperatures at -42 degrees Celsius — before wind chill — warming up to a balmy high of -32.

(For the Fahrenheit users, that’s roughly -43.5 and -25)

The range itself doesn’t really matter. After around -30, it’s just too fucking cold to mentally process the difference.

I’ve lived in places with the kinds of critters that the meme represents. I’ve had giant spiders crawl on me, I’ve stepped on scorpions, stepped over highly-venomous snakes, and even held the tail of a giant boa constrictor in the wild.

I’m not saying that I liked any of these (the boa constrictor was pretty awesome) — but I’ll take the risk with any of them over the cold.

Call me weak. Call me soft. I don’t care.

I am not built for places where the air hurts my face.