With temperatures plunging the way they did it sparked conversation about the coldest days we’d ever experienced. I don’t remember what the temperature was one particular December day but my husband and I drove a high school student to the airport on a brutally cold winter evening. Despite time spent warming up the vehicle beforehand and our being dressed in warm layers, we were cold to the bone all the way there and back. A vehicle and its heating system were no match for the conditions that night and we know, looking back, we had no business on the road when anything could have gone wrong. But we arrived back home safely and had a furnace we could crank, a warm shower to step into, and extra blankets at our disposal. The coldest I have ever been was indeed short lived.
That memory got me thinking about some of the ‘est’(as a superlative suffix) moments in my life and how I would fill in those blanks. So here are a few.
The fastest roller coaster I’ve been on is the Viper in Southern California. Today it holds no distinction as tallest or fastest among coaster enthusiasts, but it was more than enough for me as my fastest thrill ride moment.
Although I have been at the base of the CN Tower, a convergence of events including a Blue Jays double header, the arrival of the Tall Ships, and a downtown festival meant our group was whisked past the Tower and taken to a less crowded venue. As a result, the tallest place I ever stood was years later atop the St. Louis Arch at 630 feet (besting by a mere four feet a trip up the Calgary Tower).
The hottest temperature I can remember was a summer day in Las Vegas when a digital display announced 115 degrees Fahrenheit. But drinking ice water and darting in and out of air conditioning made it bearable. The hottest I have ever felt was sitting near the front of a terraced venue where there was zero air movement around me. The heat was stifling and although I was watching a highly entertaining show, I was uncomfortable and needed it to end so I could inhale some fresh air. The temperature wasn’t extreme but that was the hottest I have ever felt.
The farthest from home I have been is 8,552 km when I was in Constanta, Romania. The toughest class for me in university was Geomorphology, and the hardest book I have ever read is “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri.
The tastiest meal I have eaten was sitting oceanside, toes in the warm sand, watching a beautiful sunset with my husband while a strolling saxophone player provided the perfect musical backdrop. But then again, was that truly the tastiest meal I have ever had or did the setting heighten the flavour of what I was eating? That was what struck me again and again as I thought about some of the ‘est’ moments in my life. They have been good, wonderful and special moments. The same can’t be said for others.
The reality is I don’t have a hungriest or thirstiest moment to add to my list. Have I been hungry? Yes. Have I been thirsty? For sure. But because food has never been scarce I have never gone without for more than a few hours, and water has never been inaccessible. Even when I’ve been at my sickest, I had medications to take, a family to care for me, and a warm bed in which to recover.
Truly, my coldest, hottest, hungriest and thirstiest moments were momentary. Fleeting. That is not the case for the many battling difficult elements without the promise of a roof over their head, heating or cooling sources, a pantry stocked with food or a closet filled with necessary clothing.
Instead of worrying about such things I can think about the sweetest chocolate I’ve ever tasted, the scariest manufactured moments I’ve experienced in theme parks, or the lengthiest reading list I have ever tackled because of access to books. All good things.
Some people experience very difficult ‘est’ circumstances in their lives—hungriest, thirstiest, hottest, coldest, angriest, sickest, scariest and bloodiest. These are such painful situations. By contrast, many of my ‘est’ moments are actually my ‘best’ moments.
When it comes to the extremes represented by the ‘ests’ of our lives, I need to recognize that most of them put me on the fortunate side of the spectrum. Maybe if I work a little harder to help bring about better balance so that others can experience ‘ests’ as ‘bests’, it just might result in some of the happiest and worthiest moments in my own life. That’s my outlook.
