It’s currently 88 degrees, and with the heat index it’s around 150. Okay, not that hot but it might as well be. Walking outside is like stepping into a microwave on high cooking a Hot Pocket. It’s the kind of heat that within two minutes your underwear is damp. 10 minutes they’re soaked. After 20 minutes you’ve peeled them off and are running towards the closest body of water available, as the police chase close behind in their air-conditioned squad car.
I’ve truly learned to loathe summer around here anymore(cue old man rant.) Growing up it got hot for sure, but there was always a lull in the hot action and you got some, while not cool days, comfortably warm days. You could still ride your bike without having a heat seizure or just mild heat hallucinations.
On those super hot days you and your pal or pals hunkered in someone’s basement(usually mine.) You played with your Star Wars toys or GI Joe toys or Transformers and enjoyed the cool of an unfinished basement with glass of something nearby(soda, Ice Teasers, Caprisun.) You knew that upstairs was also cool, so afternoon cartoons or a rented movie awaited, along with some inappropriate R-rated horror movie you talked your mom(my mom) into renting. You chilled out in the chilled house and basement until BMX weather and outdoor shenanigans weather returned. And if your mom was tired with the dirty, loud, and overzealous pre-teens making all the noise and mess we could always hide in the woods behind the house and at least have some coverage from the heat.
When we traded toys for music and stacks of cassettes, the basement was the place to be as we had a billiards table and a dart board so we could live out our pool shark fantasies as we blasted everything from Purple Rain to Paranoid to Eat Em And Smile to Look What The Cat Dragged In.
It seems nowadays the heat is oppressive even on upper 70s days. I think the ozone disintegrating because of all the White Rain hairspray use in the 80s brought our protective coating to its demise. And then you add humidity and it’s like someone transported Indiana down to the bayou, or worse, the Florida Panhandle. If I wanted to live in a Trump-approved penal colony like the Sunshine State, well I’d probably have myself committed. Same goes for Texas and Arizona(but that a DRY heat….yeah, right.)
I’d say I prefer winter, but I don’t like arctic cold either and that’s what we’ve been getting for the last decade or so. Rain on Christmas, polar vortex on New Year’s Day. No more in-betweens or balanced cold. You’re either looking at mud in the front yard or 3 foot drifts.
There’s no pleasing me I guess. I’m going in tomorrow morning for the heart cath, and it’s supposed to be oppressively hot tomorrow as well. It’ll be in an air-conditioned hospital, so no worries about having a heart cath in someone’s steamy backyard. I’ll recuperate in my air-conditioned home, watching movies and listening to music. All the toys are boxed up, and my parents sold the billiards table when I was 12 so no pool shark moves or Rebel Alliance battles. Music and movies are fine.
Okay, see you on the flip side. And keep cool and make sure your animals are okay, you animals.
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