A Woman Who Intensely Fears Freezing To Death

There is a woman who intensely fears freezing to death. Her name could be Getty. The fear started when she was house-sitting for her friend Nora, who had went out to keep a tally on how many red cars used the nearby motorway. She has never revealed why she does it, but she has to do it at night because, “The numbers always work better that way.”

The fear took place inside Getty as a result of her unknown allergy to hamsters. She was sitting in Nora's living room, making sure Mario (the hamster) had enough food and water. Especially water. Nora had said that the past few hamsters had died of dehydration before, and it's particularly heart-breaking to throw them in the bin because at that stage they are “extra crunchy”.

At the time, Getty had been watching a documentary about polar exploration, in which plenty of people perished. She had been feeling a bit dizzy, her eyes got itchy and heavy and she felt very sleepy. She remembers nothing except when Nora came back from car-spotting and asked why there was no gin left. It was then Getty realised that she had almost frozen to death like the people in the TV, she had fallen asleep with the window open and everything!

That time Getty was lucky. She vowed never to almost (or completely) freeze to death never again. Unfortunately she lived alone. She decided that in order to not freeze to death in the night, she would need someone, a man, a husband to keep her warm. So, each night, when it got dark, she would go out to bars and places where she could ask a man “Do you want to come back to mine and keep me warm?”, most, if not all of the men said yes.

During the days, when she is about her daily business (she works in an accessory shop for land-line phones) she has to wear very warm clothes. Like jumpers and big, puffy jackets to keep her from even getting frostbite on her lobes. She is always rubbing her arms and legs to keep herself warm. When someone asks what she's doing, she says with a smile, “Ah, bad circulation runs in the family,”. After watching her rubbing herself to keep warm, some men walk up and ask if she wants them to “keep her warm” later all by themselves.

Getty could go to a sauna and keep warm in there, but she has also seen “Titanic” where people have drowned (and also frozen to death), so she has been put off.

Getty could go and live in warmer climates, but she doesn't speak any other languages and has always said “frankly, I don't see why I should have to bother learning”. Sometimes she thinks she'd rather freeze to death than do that.