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It’s time for TV news anchors and weather reporters to stop ordering us around.

Well, it’s not so much ordering, as it is silly little suggestions, reminders and heads-ups, such as: “Don’t forget your umbrella today; it’s raining cats and dogs;” “Hey, better get into that sweater drawer and grab the woolies and warmies because a cold front’s coming;” “Bundle up the kids because it’ll be nippy out there waiting for the school bus.”

Do the weather forecasters think we’re so dumb that, if it’s raining or about to be, we won’t take an umbrella unless they tell us to?

Do they assume that every person here in Southwest Florida has a drawer full of sweaters? And even if we have one, it wouldn’t occur to us to wear it if there’s a chill in the air?

Do the TV people assume that those who have kids waiting for the school bus would dress them for a beach party on chilly mornings?

Can’t they report the weather without telling us how to react to it?

My favorite TV weather warning was from WFTV in Orlando a couple of weeks ago. The station reported a wind chill advisory from the National Weather Service. It noted, “much colder air will sweep” through central Florida. The advisory ended with this paragraph: “If you must venture outdoors, make sure you wear a hat and gloves. Make sure children who will be outside are dressed appropriately for the cold.”

Make sure we wear hats and gloves? How many people here even have gloves, not counting catchers’ mitts or gardening gloves? And even if we do have some “weather” gloves, are we so stupid that we would not wear them (if we could find them in our “gloves drawer”) in cold weather?

Does the weatherman or woman think that anybody really keeps gloves in the car’s glove compartment?

Come to think of it, where around here can a person buy some warm wooly mittens or a pair of slightly dressy leather gloves?

McFarland’s Men’s Store on Marco Island does not carry gloves. I looked up “gloves” in the Collier County yellow pages. No luck. The index goes straight from “globes” to “goggles.” Dillard’s at Coastland Mall does have a glove selection, “for people who have to go up north,” as a clerk put it.

Wal-Mart has some gloves and Target does too, but “only a few,” the Target lady told me.

Maybe one of our TV stations could come up with a community effort to make gloves, scarves, hats, galoshes and slickers easily available to viewers, so the TV folks could take comfort in the knowledge that there’s a good chance we would have proper foul weather gear when they tell us to use it.

I’d wear a pair of mittens with a WINK-TV logo on them or a pair of galoshes with the NBC-2 Peacock in bold colors.

To be fair, the weather people are only trying to help but sometimes it seems they can see through their teleprompter screens right into our kitchens as they regularly tell us what to do.

I will not be surprised if one day the lady in front of the weather map says brightly, “You out there, yeah! the blonde brushing your teeth, give the back teeth a little more work or you’ll get a plaque buildup before long.” Or the chatty TV meteorologist peers out of my kitchen TV and says, “Hey lady, that cheese omelet you’re chewing on is going straight to your thighs! I’m just saying.”

That would send me lunging for the off button.

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Chris Curle is a former news anchor for CNN and for ABC TV stations in Atlanta, Houston and Washington, D.C. E-mail: chris@chriscurle.com.