Navy Seals don’t have Two Heads
I’ve never been the one to check weather forecasts. But last week made me think twice about picking up that habit.
As someone who was born in, and spent a huge part of my childhood in Nigeria, I’ve had summer literally all my life. Nobody wore jackets because of the cold outside. The harshest weather conditions were ‘harmattan’, which lasted for less than a week this year — and heavy rain, which I never thought of as a threat. In school for example, besides the fact that I always misplaced my umbrellas, instead of carrying one, I preferred to just ‘make a run for it’ once rain started falling; or join a girl under her umbrella — a well-known strategy used by guys to initiate small talk.
With this huge amount of ‘weather certainty’, you can understand where my ‘forecast ignorance’ started. To me, nobody looked at the weather forecast — except maybe to make sure it doesn’t rain on their wedding day.
And in case you didn’t notice, the Sun is really hot. And I’m African. Inevitably, the word ‘summer’, while evoking thoughts of ‘holiday’ and ‘beachside sunbathing’ to Caucasians, to me it’s a firm ‘stay inside and avoid the outside world at all costs.
And that’s what I did all Summer. Stayed indoors; From home, to the office, to the kitchen. Rinse and repeat.
My sojourn to the world outside began again last week, this time to Amsterdam for a few meetings. Being the type of person I am, I didn’t bother checking the forecast. The South of France was bearable; Switzerland wasn’t that bad; Netherlands, I figured, would be at par. So I decided not to take a jacket.
I landed in Amsterdam at night. And what a pleasant surprise it was! The second I stuck my head out of the plane, the gust of cold wind reminded me of the sheer non-sense in my earlier decision.
A backstory:
I had a million pep talks from my mum growing up. (She never lingered on small talk for too long. Not her style. Found a way to turn every time with the kids into an opportunity to ‘instil values’). A popular theme for her talks was success. ‘Do you see Bill Gates…?’, she would say, ‘Does he have two heads?’ She would go on and on, telling us about noteworthy people and the fact that they had just one head. With the number of pep talks we had, you can imagine how much ‘head-counting’ I did in my younger days.
Back to the story:
That first night in Amsterdam, and the days that ensued, humbled me. It rained like crazy, was colder than my time at San Francisco last fall, and wind speeds were so out of this world, that a Dutch friend of mine called it ‘our very own Hurricane Irma’.
On one of those fateful early mornings, about 6:30am, I was heading to a meeting venue. The last train stop before the building was 20 minutes away, so I had to do some walking. I had checked out of my hotel the night before, and had my travel box with me. The weather that morning had been very tricky, and once I started the walk, all my fears came to pass.
Like clockwork, it started drizzling. Then the winds came. Then it turned to full-on rain. Even the trees were bending. And there I was, with a T-shirt, jeans and no thermal underwear.
All within 20 minutes.
It was brutal.
Since I had gone too far to head back to the station (not like the station had any significantly better covering), I had to brace myself. Drenched and cold, I needed some sort of motivation to keep going. So I recalled a video I saw on Facebook but never had the chance to really watch (cos it was more than 2 minutes long — my usual threshold). It was a video about navy seals. And how tough they were; And how they swim in sub-zero water, and walk forests for hours on end with massive load on their backs — And how they’re battle-hardened against virtually all the natural elements.
And I recalled my mum’s pep talks.
And I thought to myself, if these guys can do all that, then I should surely be able to man up and get to my destination in one piece, and alive.
After all, navy seals don’t have two heads.
