Every so often I forget that my boyfriend and I are from two very different places and upbringings, and I’m shocked when we don’t have the same past life experiences.
Because he grew up in the middle of Florida, while I originate from the northern midwest, we certainly don’t have many overlapping details in our childhoods.
What’s more, he grew up in a pretty well to do family, while I come from a place of poverty and substance abuse, so the discrepancies cover a wide range of topics. One of the funniest things to me is his complete lack of knowledge about surviving winter. He’s lived most of his life in tropical temperatures, with continual heat and high humidity year round. Meanwhile, I’m accustomed to at least 6 months of brutal winter, with temperatures below zero degrees and nasty snowfall on a weekly basis. Seeing him trying to deal with the low temperatures and weather events back home is such a hoot! He hardly knows anything about running a furnace, heating up a car before driving it, or proper snow gear. Another thing he apparently didn’t know about was the threat of pipes bursting if the indoor air temperature dips too low! We found that one out the hard way, when we left for a long weekend and came home to moderate flooding in the basement. Apparently he had turned the heating system off entirely, rather than maintaining a low temperature of 55 degrees. It was my fault, really; should have realized that he didn’t know the golden rule of critical temperature maintenance in winter.