A couple summers ago, I sat down with one of the least liked people on Earth, Old Man Winter. We did the interview by Skype. He called from an undisclosed location.

First, thank you for doing this. How should I call you? What do your friends call you?

Well, I don’t have a lot of friends. Usually people hate winter, I mean me. You can just call me Winter.

Ok, Winter. So, what are you up to now that your job is done?

My job is never done. See, there are those little things called the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Now that I’m done with your part of the world, I’m taking care of the other one.

Sure, but you’re much nicer to them. How come their winter, or their “you” I should say, is a lot nicer?

Because you’re the North. If you don’t get cold and snowy and damp during winter, there’s
nothing northerly about you anymore. And also, the South gets really hot and dry and sweaty during my pal Young Dude Summer, so I cut them some slack.

Ok, that kinda makes sense. I guess I should say what do you do when work slows down?

What everybody else does: I sleep in, relax, catch up on some tv shows. Especially Game of Thrones as I was a guest-star on it.

The RCMP in Nova Scotia were tough with you last season. They issued a reward for your capture, and in PEI they even locked up your friend Frosty. How did you feel about that?

What do you think? Like I said, I don’t have a lot of friends, so seeing my buddy behind bars was pretty hard. I’m just doing my job, you know. I too get the me-blues, I mean the winter-blues, except that I have it all year long. Having a support system is important and really helps. When the cops locked up Frosty I really struggled to get going. I mean, look at him, was it really necessary? He’s not a bad person!

There is an awkward moment while I sit quietly, waiting for Winter to wipe the tears off of his face.

You don’t seem to be very happy with your job, do you ever think about retiring?

Retiring? And who’s going to do the job? I’d have to find someone willing to do it and train them for a while… In my dreams I’d have an Old Man Winter Jr to pass the job down to. But as I’ve never been able to find an Old Woman Winter, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

Have you tried online dating? I keep hearing you can find all kind of people on there.

It’s called Tinder, not Twinter. It’s not like there a lot of people like me. No, really, I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll grow old, well older, alone and keep spreading cold and crappy weather until I’m too old.

I know we often complain about you, but we need winter. What will happen then?

Global warming.

You’re funnier than I thought. Thank you for sitting down with me.

You’re welcome, thank you for having me. Where do you live?

Right here in Nova Scotia, Canada.

See you mid-October then.

I was starting to like you…