I woke up Saturday to a pleasant surprise — rain and unseasonably cool temperatures.

I suppose like everyone else, I was glad for the rainfall simply because the ground needs it – it’s been dry quite a bit in recent weeks.

But for me it was something else. I’ve always enjoyed cool weather. Yesterday, when my youngest son was lamenting the weather, saying this isn’t the way summer is supposed to feel, I was enjoying the change.

Of course, I like it when it’s foggy and damp in the winter, the air cool and crisp in the autumn, and even those rainy, cold days of early spring.

Not that I pay much attention to the weather, generally. Unless there’s something weather-specific which needs advance planning, I rarely even check out a forecast. The weather is going to do what it’s going to do, whether I know about it ahead of time or not, so I figure why bother?

And that leads to nice little surprises like yesterday, when I don’t know such a pleasant day is coming.

I don’t really understand why I like this sort of weather, any more than I can explain why I like pepperoni pizza or why I don’t like okra. I just do or I don’t.

Perhaps it has something to do with my upbringing, or at least a tiny little part of it. When I was a kid and a teen, I absolutely adored scary movies. Couldn’t get enough of them. And while those stories were set in various climates, it seems a disproportionate number of those movies were set against the backdrop of cool, rainy weather. Sometimes even stormy conditions persisted.

Later, as an adult, I enjoyed watching the X-Files and Millennium, two additional shows which often featured cooler, sometimes damp weather conditions.

Even in the movie Braveheart, one of my favorite scenes is when the lead character, William Wallace, is meeting with his wife, in secret. I don’t like that scene because it’s somewhat romantic. No, I just remember hearing the rain patter on the leaves, watching the actor’s breath fog in front of them, and thinking how enjoyable the weather looked.

Whatever it is that drives me to favor colder, damp conditions, it doesn’t seem to be hereditary. No one else in my family shares this trait with me. My son, yesterday, even expressed a mild belief one must be slightly off-kilter to enjoy that sort of day in the summer.

Ah, well, I guess there’s no accounting for taste. Or weather preferences. I suppose there are just as many different preferences for weather among folks as their are different sorts of weather. And in the end, those differences are what make life — and the weather — exciting.