Because while you are getting a cooling breeze those of us further back are freezing to death in the 60 mph slipstream.
Surely not on an urban bus that’s doing probably 20mph on a hot summer’s day.
Chiming in to slam the Asians. Having noted the interesting comment from Taiwan (but Taiwan is usually hotter than Hell IMLE), most if not all Japanese and Chinese of my acquaintance have a mortal fear of moving air. Even when they can be brought to raise the air conditioning to a reasonably appropriate temperature (IME the average Japanese business has its AC set to about 81 in August), they will not tolerate any circulation of said air, so it feels even more stagnant and stifling than the temperature would suggest. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they too are motivated by fear of dread disease and distemperment that will ensue if moving air touches you. Japanese ladies will enter said 81 degree rooms wearing sweaters and carrying lap blankets.
Maybe not 20 mph but I travel by bus almost daily from work and I’m sick of selfish fuckers opening the window above their head, uncaring of the hurricane created further back.
But then again i do work at a university and this generation of students do appear to have been born in a barn.
My mother was from Tennessee and she was utterly convinced that if you were to go outside with damp hair on a cool evening you’d catch pneumonia. The same thing would happen if your shoes and socks got damp.
All my German/Amish relatives would go apeshit if there was a draft. Close the door! Windows can be open a crack, but there must be NO cross-ventilation!!
What is their explanation for this belief? How does an educated, intelligent person, who understands and believes in modern science, explain this belief? This is truly bizarre.
My Hungarian-born, highly educated father forbid us from opening windows on both sides of the car at the same time for this reason.
Ed
My grandmother, who was born and raised here in the US, lives in mortal fear of a draft. No matter where she goes, if there is a window opened the slightest crack, or a vent that may have air conditioning coming out of it, she can’t be anywhere near it. Also, she flips out if the windows are opened in the car. This summer, I had to drive her somewhere and it was about 90 degrees out. She only let me open the window about an inch on her side. I had my side all the way down because the minivan we were in had no AC and I was about to burst into flames. We sweltered the whole trip and I was not in the greatest mood when we got to our destination.
The ridiculous fear of drafts always made me crazy. Now, even at 35, I feel like I am bucking the system when I go out with wet hair or drive with all the windows open.
I’m surprised to read that young people carry on the fear of drafts. I always assumed it was an old lady thing.
I am reminded of the story of an american who purchased an english stately home. He loved the place, but found the main room unbearably drafty. So he spend the summer fitting draft excluders, sealing the windows, and arranging drapes until all the drafts were gone. By now, it was getting on for winter, and on a cold night, he decided to light the open fire to warm the room. But nothing he could do would make the fire burn - the room just filled with smoke and the fire would die out.
In desperation, he called his neighbour, who popped over. “You go and make a cup of tea, and I’ll sort this out,” said the neighbour. By the time the homeowner had returned, the fire was blazing, there was no smoke and all was well. And the draft excluders had been removed from the doors, the window was open slightly, and the rearranged drapes moved to restore the room to its original drafty state.
Si
This has been a very eye-opening thread. I really strongly associated this with the Bulgarian mindset and it’s strange to realize how widespread this idea is. Thanks, y’all.
Indians, too, and it’s fucking hot in India. AC breezes are OK. Fan breezes are OK. Cross breezes are NOT. I hated it when I was there - those breezes felt SO nice!
As odd beliefs go, this is an odd beleif.
The closest I can think of to it is the switch in the belief that a sea-breeze is good for you to being that a sea breeze is bad for you (contains rotting seaweed)
Edit: Correction: Doesn’t contain actual rotting seaweed (that’d have to be one hell of a windy and unpleasant day). Rotting seaweed fumes.
Of course, without a fan timer you will die.
I should be dead by now.
How would they feel about being in one of these buildings?
Hmm, well it’s not that easy to answer. In Poland drafts are generally seen as a bad thing, and yes, everytime I was told to close the window/door (whichever was causing the ‘przeciąg’) it came with a warning about getting sick. But I always connected it with the more general “cold will make you sick”, which is also the source and cause of warnings about sitting around with wet hair, going out in the winter without appropriate clothes (or, more accurately, what the admonishing person thinks is appropriate) or even standing for too long in front of an open fridge. I honestly never got the feeling that the draft itself, without being cold, can make you sick.
By the way, I believe I read that while being cold will not make you sick on its own, it can weaken your body’s defences and make it easier for opportunist germs to carry out a succesful invasion - any truth to this?
This is just too weird. My mother in law came here from Germany as a little kid. I’ll have to ask her if Oma was off the beam with regard to cross-breezes.
The closest I’ve ever come to anything like this was when I was having a pair of leather pants made by some biker chick in Fuckin’ HOT Wisconsin.
I had to hang out at her house while she did the final sizing and sewing. It was like 105 degrees and they wouldn’t open any windows (and had no AC). They thought the house would get even hotter. I was there for about 4 hours and I thought I’d freekin’ die. It had to be over 100 degrees in the house.
pssst! This is better suited for GQ
Having said that, here are a few words on colds from the Master.
You’d think, though, if cold weather lowered body resistance, that there’d be a spike in all diseases during the winter months. Doesn’t seem to be the case, though.
Not exactly on topic, but I lived in China for awhile and tutored a South Korean businessman in English a few days a week. One day “fan death” came up and he was completely astounded that it wasn’t something we worried about in the States; he’d even read explanations of the “science” behind it in the newspapers, he said. We ended up getting totally derailed while I tried to explain to him that, if fan death were real, my state (Oklahoma) would have a population of about six.