The Boys Who Wear Shorts All Winter

[LiberalArkie]

Lindsey Miller first took note of the boys who refused to wear long pants when she was in grade school. At her elementary school in Maryland, a few particular boys made a habit of wearing shorts to school all winter, even though January temperatures in the mid-Atlantic state routinely drop below freezing. And it was always boys, she told me, never female students—“Girls made fun of them, but other guys cheered them on,” she recalled. One kid she knew in third grade, whose name has escaped her memory in the decade-plus since, “wore basically the same pair of shorts all year,” Miller, now 20, remembered.

The “one kid who wears shorts to school all year”: In regions that get cold and snowy in the winter, he’s a figure that’s equal parts familiar and bewildering to kids and teachers alike, and his clothing choices present an annual hassle for his parents. On Twitter, where Lindsey Miller once joked about the middle-school winter-shorts boy, he is in fact the butt of a number of observational jokes, many of them from classmates and beleaguered moms and dads: “There’s really this dude wearing shorts at school… IN THE WINTER.” “Have kids so you can argue with tiny, opinionated people about why they can’t wear shorts in winter and then coats when it’s 80 degrees.” Educators at a middle school and high school in Minnesota confirmed to me that they can count on having two or three of him every year, arriving at school after braving the morning windchill with bare calves. (In the interest of transparency, both were former teachers of mine, who I’m sure were perplexed to hear from me for the first time in more than a decade only to be asked about this.)

In other words, the Boy Who Wears Shorts All Winter is a highly recognizable but largely inscrutable character, and when I asked parents, teachers, child psychologists, and a former B.W.W.S.A.W. himself to try to explain what exactly motivates such a plainly impractical clothing choice, they all offered different answers.

A common belief among parents is that some kids just “run hot,” or get less uncomfortable in cold temperatures than other people do. One mother in the Midlands region of the U.K. told me that her 8-year-old son must be “hot-blooded,” because he insists on wearing shorts to school even when it’s below freezing outside, claiming he “doesn’t feel the cold.” One of the educators I spoke with in Minnesota told me that when she asks her students why they’ve made shorts their winter uniform, the response she typically gets is just a shrug and an “I’m not cold.”

Snip

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/why-some-kids-wear-shorts-all-winter/604633/?utm_source=digg

[TheBlackAdder]

1. I see joggers run in 20 degree weather wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

6. Yep! When I ran, regardless of weather, it was a tank top and shorts!

[Blue_true]

44. People don't realize that a runner's body is throwing off a massive amount of heat.

It is only a problem when a runner bonks and the heat being thrown off drops, but that is an issue for distance runners mostly. For the 5-8 mile runners, the bonk is not an issue.

[Kali]

2. girls and women used to have to wear dresses and skirts all the time

boys in shorts? big effing deal.

[Ohiogal]

4. +1000

[ret5hd]

9. Yeah but that's different.

[Silver Gaia]

20. Yep.

I remember walking to school in winter IN MICHIGAN in miniskirts... because that's the only kind of skirts in fashion/available, and pants were not allowed for girls.

I survived.

[LakeArenal]

28. Yes!!!

Also I run hot. I walk out barefoot in Wisconsin to feed birds, run for mail.
Some people think 68 degrees is cold.

[Glimmer of Hope]

23. I was sent home from work for wearing pants. Not impressed either.

[Arkansas Granny]

26. That's right. Even in elementary school in the 50's it was skirts and dresses only for girls

regardless of the weather. Cold legs were a fact of life.

[fierywoman]

35. And my L.I. high school in the late 60s.

[Backseat Driver]

37. We were allowed to wear pants in the 50s beneath our skirts and dresses, but

were forced to remove them in the open co-ed "coatroom" area in the classroom. Also, no boots were allowed; we needed to bring our indoor shoes. Now, girls can wear pants, athleticwear (sweats) or leggings including denim jeans without studs, same as boys, and non-offensive long tops/sweats in winter, shorter but modest ones like tanks in warmer fall/spring seasons. Kids can wear shoe boots/high top casuals of leather or canvas all day long. My grandson's coat area isn't in the classroom; it lines the hallway, and there are regular outbreaks of leaping lice, and occasional thefts of scarves/mittens and movie/gaming character zipper pulls off coats and boots.

[demigoddess]

45. +2000

ten below zero walking to school in a skirt.

[lapfog_1]

3. my 17 year old

is still wearing short sleeve shirts and sweat pants to school.

It's around 35F here.

He isn't alone... I think it is some sort of "I'm really tough and badass" statement

[NewJeffCT]

5. My freshman year of college was in upstate NY back in 1985-86

I remember a guy from Canada wearing shorts all winter up there - and upstate NY winters are brutal - heavy snows, high winds and temps well below freezing for 4-5 months. We just figured it was a Canadian thing.

He did have a heavy jacket on, but it wasn't like a long parka or anything like that

[MontanaMama]

7. The Hellgate High School cross country

team runs past my house every afternoon. Boys and girls in shorts no matter how cold it is. Yesterday one of the boys had no shirt on.

[lunatica]

8. There may be a scientific reason for this.

They might be among the successful pioneers into space. They might be able to withstand the cold temperatures in the arctic or high in the permanently frozen mountains. Or as scuba divers in the far north super cold oceans.

It might be a mutation. New studies in genomics have found that humans aren’t just made up of half of each parent’s genes. They’re actually born with their own unique mutations too which can be recessive or not.

Or it may all be a result of all those chemicals in our food. Either way I think it should be studied instead of making fun of it.

[dweller]

10. it may be they are hardening themselves

for the future apocalyptic environment .. these kids are viewing the news and they know ... it doesn't look good in the long run.. Greta ?

hell i harden myself for winter every year, acclimating myself for the cold by not wearing a coat outside in the cold, but i'm able to tolerate cold temps better than hot any day myself .. eh, i'm a firesign, so

✌🏼

[Igel]

38. Doesn't explain the kids in my high school.

I graduated in '77.

[janterry]

15. see my post, below, about Wim Hof

n/t

[Kali]

31. pppfffttt

it is just teenage boys, no conspiracy needed

[panader0]

11. I wore bell bottoms.

In Hawaii they were called drapes (class of '68).
The back was always ragged from being stepped on.
My folks hated them.

[Glorfindel]

32. In order to wear the bell bottoms properly, one needed to wear platform heels

to keep from stepping on the pants. I had several pairs of each, but I also had a 28-inch waist at the time.

[nocoincidences]

12. It can also be a regional thing.

I never saw people in shorts in Winter in north Texas, but here in Virginia Beach, all winter long people run around in shorts and sweatshirts!

It freaked me out when I first moved here, but now I hardly notice it, it just is.

I think it is some severe form of denial of the cold, like: VB is never cold, the Beach doesn't get cold, it's not cold out here....

[Cartoonist]

13. I never wear shorts

I have swimming trunks that go to my knees, but I only wear them at the pool.

[janterry]

14. Wim Hof (the Ice Man)

is heroic.

But what he does is NOT heroic (he's taught thousands)

from wiki:

Wim Hof, also known as The Iceman, is a Dutch extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand freezing temperatures. He has set Guinness world records for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice, and still holds the record for a barefoot half-marathon on ice and snow.

Link to tweet

[lunatica]

16. He should be studied

I bet he has a genetic mutation he was born with.

But he does protect his head, so he’s protecting his brain too. He must feel the cold there.

[janterry]

24. They've actually injected him

with an endotoxin

"Hof claims that he can influence his autonomic nervous system and thereby suppress his immune response through concentration and meditation.

To investigate this, Hof was administered endotoxin while practising his concentration and meditation technique. During this experiment, various measurements were performed, including brain activity, autonomic nervous system activity and inflammatory mediators in the blood.

Pickkers said: "After endotoxin administration, the increase of the stress hormone cortisol in Hof was much more pronounced compared to other healthy volunteers. We know that this hormone is released in response to increased autonomic nervous system activity and that it suppresses the immune response. In accordance, the levels of inflammatory mediators in Hof's blood were much lower. On average, Hof's immune response was decreased by 50 percent compared to other healthy volunteers. In addition, hardly any flu-like symptoms were observed."

They've actually repeated this with several of his students. None got sick.

Also:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-explains-how-iceman-resists-extreme-cold-180969134/

[world wide wally]

17. It's actually quite common out here in Colorado for people to wear shorts year round

[Jokerman]

18. I would have been that kid if my Mom had allowed it.

I still wear shorts around the house and sleep with a fan even in the dead of Winter.

[chowder66]

19. I played outside in a bikini in the snow when I was about 11 years old.

I've always had a high tolerance for cold weather UNLESS I'm near water and the cold gets into my bones. Then I can't shake the cold.

A trick I learned when you are shivering cold is to roll your shoulders up and then down to relax them. Works every time... for me. Except when it's bone chillingly cold.

[hlthe2b]

21. That's nearly all the teen boys (and quite a few girls) in Colorado... Even when I've got on

a wicking layer, a light fleece under a heavier fleece, wool tights under jeans, a Gore-Tex shell and usually two pairs of gloves or mittens in subzero temps or heavy snow and wind. I know damned well they are cold as the wind whips through while they are waiting on their bus, but like my snow-loving cold-oblivious doggy girl, they don't seem to notice.

Yes, they are getting on a school bus to be driven to school, but what if the bus slides in the ditch and they are stuck there for hours? I know. Teens gonna be teens.

[dhill926]

22. I wear shorts all winter....

but then again, I live in SoCal...

[milestogo]

25. Saying you have a high tolerance does not protect you

From frostbite.

[janterry]

30. did you see my post about Wim Hof?

It does (a little

[mopinko]

27. i had one of those. imho, he was a genetic warrior.

i think people come in certain 'flavors', to fit certain niches in the tribe. this was a second son, commonly thought of as the one you send to war since forever.
lots of other things about him that convinced me that he was made for that role.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

29. There's a mailman in my Minneapolis neighborhood who always wears shorts.

But we girls had to wear skirts all year no matter how cold it was, so BFD.

[pwb]

33. I just call them all assholes to myself.

.

[delisen]

34. Bodies prepped for future climate. Some genes smarter than others

[Loki Liesmith]

36. I've done this. It's not hard.

Keep your upper body warm enough and your legs will be warm as blood flow will transport heat to the legs. Ducks have perfected this system.

[11 Bravo]

39. My youngest son never wore anything but shorts throughout HS.

Kid has good legs.
Now he covers up as the weather dictates.

[CousinIT]

40. A guy where I work wears shorts year round.

It's mostly puzzling and partly GROSS. Because he ain't pretty and I just wish he'd put some clothes on and spare me having to look at him. Gross!

[NickB79]

41. You can't go out on a Minnesota winter day and NOT see someone in shorts

I shit you not, I saw a guy in shorts last year when the windchill was -40F during the February polar vortex outside the Mall of America. I know a guy like that, same deal. It's just how they like to dress.

Me, with my prepared-for-anything mentality, loses his mind at the thought of being stuck in a snowdrift for hours in below-zero weather and wearing shorts.

[ellie]

42. That's on par

with the people who light every light in their house at night, all night. The house of my best friend in high school was like that. I used to stay over and we would go out walking in the middle of the night and come back and every light was on all night. What the hell is that?

On edit: My uncle wore flip flops all year, especially in the winter.

[Blue_true]

43. I run in shorts when it is below freezing.

I wear a thermal socks and a top on my torso. I don't wear a cap because my head gets too hot. What is going on for me is my legs don't appear to be bothered by the cold, but if I am too warm on my legs, then I am uncomfortable.