Snuggies Scare Me!

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      I don’t know quite how to put this. A part of me feels as though I should not be sharing this sort of information with anyone, not even my confessor. But this is the truth: Snuggies scare me. I cannot imagine that you do not know what a Snuggie is. Snuggies are the latest craze in the genre of such things as the Chia Pets, the Flo-Bee hair trimmer, the inertia chain saw, and the Genuine, Simulated, Leather, Hand-Tooled Bible Belt.
      The Snuggies are those fleece blankets with sleeves added for the arms, a strange assemblage of fabric that you can wear to stay warm while lounging at your home or venturing out to various social events. The costume blankets come in all sizes and prints, and they scare me.
      Now, there is an upgraded version that can be worn outdoors and to sporting events. The commercial has people wearing revised version Snuggies outside in the stands, watching what I suppose are football games. People are even line-dancing in them. What are people thinking?
      These Snuggies seem sinister and subversive. There is something conniving about them. I don’t trust them, nor do I like the many prints, which include tiger, various pastels, a bright red, and a camouflage pattern. Of course, the camouflage is a hoax; otherwise, we would not be able to see it, and so, since we can see it, then it must not be camouflage.
            I, who have never been cold in my life, feel that Snuggies are nothing more than a hot tomb where a person can get caught and sweat themselves to infinity. Oooooooo, the thought of having my body in a warm fleece bag that fits around my neck and arms makes me swelter to the point of a heat stroke. I have never been cold lounging in the winter, and I usually spend most of the winter barefooted inside and outside to keep from getting hot from the thermostat being set all the way up to 65 degrees in the house.
      I look at LL Bean catalogs and see all those people wearing wool pants, thick flannel shirts, long underwear, wool socks, boots and wool hats, and I swelter. I would love to be able to wear any of the above-mentioned items, but even the thought of such clothing makes me want to kick off my shoes and throw my socks away.
      I have a closet full of sweaters. These items of clothing are properly named. Occasionally I will wear one outside if I am going to be away from any additional source of heat. However, as soon as someone builds a fire or turns the heat to high in the car, I am coming out of the sweater and rolling up my sleeves.
      All of my sleeping bags have zippers at both ends so I can get my feet out of the bag when I become trapped like a turkey in an oven bag. I even take all the cinch lines out of the hood of my sleeping bag so I will not accidentally get cinched up inside from head to toe without a way to escape.
I do not need a Snuggie. I need a Cool Suit. I need a set of clothing that pumps cool liquid through tiny veins that can deliver coolness. Now that would be the ticket.
      I once thought of being an entrepreneur and invented a cooling item that I referred to as “Cool Head.” The imagination behind this item was born on a hot summer day in a tobacco field located beside a watermelon patch. At a break, we took a couple of watermelons and halved them and ate the insides out. Then, to stay cool we put the watermelon hats on our heads. Cool things on the head really cool you down. (Of course, the flies and the gnit-gnats think it is a pretty glorious thing as well.)
      But I digress. The Cool Head prototype was a zip-lock bag filled with that blue alcohol cooler ice found in reusable ice packets. I froze a zip-lock filled the blue alcohol ice over a bowl in the freezer. When it was frozen I took it out and put it on my head and put a cap on. I wore it for an hour or so and soon noticed my teeth were hurting. I soon had the worse headache you have ever imagined. Within a day I had a terrible summer cold that lasted until the next Easter. I deserted my invention and went back to wearing hollowed out half watermelon rinds.
      I guess you are wondering why I have told you all of this. Actually, no reason. I just had a desire to write a little something, and this is what came out. All I wanted to say was that Snuggies scare me, I have never been cold, and hollowed-out half watermelon rinds will keep you more appropriately cool when worn on your head than frozen blue alcohol ice in a zip-lock bag placed on your head (and will cause fewer headaches).

Rev. Dan Martin is pastor of First UMC, Hendersonville. He can be reached at moose1953@hotmail.com