Beating the Heat

“Beat the heat” I’m instructed by advertisements throughout the summer.  With enormous iced teas.  With over priced beer. With a pool in my back yard.  With a new air conditioner.  With, unconvincingly, a new car.

But I can’t.  No matter what I do, or purchase, or remove from my body, I just can’t.

But as they say, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.  Although, in this case, I’m not sure what that might entail. 

I’ve considered many options.  First, I turned up the heat in our place as high as it would go, which is 92 degrees.  That’s definitely joining ‘em, if anything is.  But that caused my wife, who is usually too cold, mind you, even in the middle of the Summer, to do what I thought was an impression of a Greek Fury, complete with wide-eyed shrieking and the tearing of my flesh with her fingernails.  I said bravo, for it really was very good.  But then I realized she was just angry.  And hot. At the same time, my 4 year old son kept up an impressive, insistent, and continuous whine of such intensity that locking him in his room did nothing to abate it.

I gave in, turned off the heat, and threw open all the windows.  Unfortunately, this gave little relief, as it was 98 degrees outside; and since our U Street manse is at street level, the reflected heat from the asphalt and concrete must have created an incredible heat island effect, given the way my wife lunged at me with that knife.  I was joining ‘em, alright.  It was getting HOT at my place.

So I took a different tack.  Putting on all the warm clothes I could lay my hands on, including sweaters, jackets, coats, scarves, hats (and yes, I am aware of my use of the plural, for that is how I dressed – in the plurality) etc., I quickly left to join ‘em outside.

My actions turned out to be problematic.  First, as one might naturally assume, I was viewed by my fellow Washingtonians as a lunatic.  And not without cause, of course, but the level of shunning was far and away beyond what I’ve experienced in the past. (I’m not unfamiliar with being shunned.)  One man went so far out of his way so as not to pass me on the side walk that he was hit by a bus.  I feel bad about that.  Second, how readily I was accepted by the homeless population of U Street came as a pleasant – no, that’s not the word –ghastly – yes, that hits the mark – surprise.  Ghastly because, my, do some of those guys know how to party, and a 40-dog / cough medicine / Boon’s hangover in 98 degree heat while dressed in everything you own is something one wishes never to repeat.  Finally, I lost consciousness under a dumpster.  Not next to dumpster, nor even inside of a dumpster, but under a dumpster.  How this came to pass I am still untangling in my mind.  At this point, I think you would agree, I hadn’t beaten them, but I had joined ‘em.

But just before I lost consciousness and succumbed to heat stroke, I had the revelation that  sometimes it is better to fight and loose than to join the oppressor.  I also thought a fire hydrant was my mother and that I was 2 inches tall and lived in the 14^thCentury and my name was Ferdinand.