13.9 degrees Celsius–Happy or Sad?

Old, cold people are happier. That is what research says. Well, not exactly like that. This research (http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-make-yourself-happier) says that as you get older, you find ways to be happier. And it further states that people are at their maximum happiness at 13.9 degrees Celsius. Not knowing what Fahrenheit temperature that is, I thought, okay, maybe so. I know if I’m too hot or too cold, I’m grumpy, so the opposite must be true. But just in case, I looked it up.

I love how you can just Google anything and Google will find a website that will do the math for you, don’t you? There is a conversion table for any measurement you want—inches to centimeters or centimeters to inches, feet to yards, teaspoons to tablespoons, I could go on forever. So I went to Google and I asked for Celsius to Fahrenheit and sure enough, all I had to do was plug in the 13.9 and presto, there was my answer—57.02!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am cold at 57.02 F. I am cold at 58.02, 59.02. 60.02……all the way til about 70.02 and then I start to get comfortable, and yes, happy. That lasts until about 74.02 when I start to get a little warm here in Georgia, maybe it’s the humidity, but whatever, by 75.02 I am thinking about whether it is time to turn on the AC.

That means either enough old people where they did this study like it cold or my internal thermometer is on the fritz. Perhaps they did the study in Chicago. I was there once on Spring Break to see my daughter. It had apparently been warm enough for daffodils to bloom a few days before, but the day I arrived it was way below 13.9 C or 57.02 F either. (Chicago is kind of foreign territory to me so I’m not sure how they measure their heat or lack thereof.) Anyway, it was snowing when I got out of the taxi and not just the flurry kind, it was piling up on the sidewalks and freezing the daffodils. Days later, it got to about 50 F (10 C) and people were out in their shorts running up and down those same sidewalks and lunching alfresco!

So no offense to the researchers who wrote this study and certainly no offense to those brave old Chicagoans who love the cold, but I am not sure 13.9 C is my kind of old lady happiness. I think another study needs to be done farther south.