Put it on ice, willya?

I got nothing against ice.

I like ice cubes floating around in my iced tea on a hot summer day. Ice was among our first inhabitants when the world was being formed.

I raise this issue because I heard on the news a story about News Jersey pro surfer (Yes, they surf in Jersey.) This Ocean City man, Rob Kelly, has vowed to take an ice bath or swim in the ocean every day this year — part of a New Years resolution.

When the blizzard or so-called ‘bomb cyclone’ hit a couple of weeks ago, he could be seen trudging through snow covered beach, stripping down to his surf shorts and hitting the waves, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Rodrigo Torrejón.

I would rather have the eye fluid in my head drained with a hypodermic needle, with no anesthesia, than jump in 35-degree water.

I was a promising swimmer as a precocious 7-year-old living in St. Paul, Minn., We had moved North in the late 1960s from Alabama where I swam in lakes, rivers, creeks and community pools.

In Minnesota, I became part of the Red Cross training program. It had levels like Beginners, Advanced Beginners, Intermediate and so on. I breezed through the levels. All the time. I was aiming to get a Lifeguard certification, which was the highest level. But, alas, I was too young and too small to drag the weights from the bottom of the pool. And frankly I was too young to tell people two or three times my age to stop dunking the other kids or pushing them in the pool.

Now I can’t remember exactly what happened, but for some reason I began practicing my swimming technique in a Minnesota lake with a whole bunch of other kids, many Norwegian, who had a natural immunity to cold it seemed.

Now Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 lakes and woodchucks are abundant: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood.’

I’d go into the water with my faded Alabama tan and come out as blue as a B.B. King song. I spent the rest of the day shivering.

This is a long way of telling you that I avoided swimming as a sport when I moved back to the South. Football, baseball, basketball yes. But full immersion in water colder than a warm bath, I’ve sworn it off.

Soaking in ice is considered therapeutic. It’s a trend among athletes seeking quicker recovery from sore and injured muscles.

Not me, you go jump in the tub of cubes. You’ll find me in a 180-degree sauna sipping a cold ice tea.

Which brings me to one last thing that may explain my cold aversion. I tip the scale the other way. Bring me the heat.

I can sit in a tub with water hot enough to boil shrimp. I can take a shower that melts the curtain.

It still makes me smile, slightly sadistically, when I hear my wife, Catherine, walk into the shower. I hear the water come on followed by what sounds like the yelp of a scalded dog.

After 40 years of marriage she still forgets one of life’s important credos: Never stand under shower head when you first turn on the water.

P.S. I did do the Ice Bucket Challenge a few years ago to raise money for ALS by signing up to have a large bucket of ice water (it took two people to lift the bucket) dumped on my head.

In that moment when the water (with cubes) drenched my body, my breathing ceased, and memories of Minnesota flashed before my eyes, one thought made its way to my head: Next time I’m going for the elective eye surgery.