My son has really good cold weather gear, and he chooses not to wear it, no mater how cold it is. (He did wear the nice gloves when there was snow on the ground.) I don't think that makes him a pansy. It makes him tougher than me!

I remember seeing a frozen red-breasted robin on a snowdrift on my way to school once. Third grade. I was sad. I usually walked to school, but that day I went up the street and around the corner to ride the bus, because my friend thought it was too cold to walk. That was back in the day, in suburban Chicago, when girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. So we put on stretch pants (remember the kind with the crease sewn up the front?) under our dresses and had to take them off when we got to school. And our classrooms had cloakrooms and we all bundled up in the cloakroom for recess and going home. We went out no matter what the temperature, so long as it wasn't raining. If there was snow on the playground all the better!

Karen