My kids are tough. Outside play is canceled at school only when the temperature is below zero (about -18C), and they don't whine about the weather nearly as much as I do. So I was reading about this woman in Duluth (western tip of Lake Superior), who fell in her yard and couldn't get up. She was found 4 hours later, with no heartbeat and a 70 degree (21 C) body temp. When she arrived at the emergency room, the doctor on call applied this, heretofore unknown northern aphorism:
But there's a saying in the emergency room, he said: "You're not dead until you're warm and dead."
There's some logic there, after all, many frogs simply freeze every winter, and thaw out in spring, avoiding the whole hibernation thing. So, after raising her temperature, they started her heart, and off she went to see her grandkids. "I'm a good old Norwegian" she noted.
I never thought about it like that, but there's something profound there. Maybe, instead of the cliche, 'he's down, but not out', one could say 'he's dead, but still cold', implying the same thing, but in a fresher way.
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