The Heat Is On

It’s not clear how old I was when I started hating the feeling of being hot.  Every summer I slept with the fan on a chair beside my bed blowing directly onto my body.  After many complaints, Dad consented to get an attic fan, but I wasn’t fooled when my parents talked about how it would cool the house at night.  Luckily my neighbor Kim was usually generous in inviting Tammi, another friend with cheap parents, and me over in the afternoons to watch the Cubs on WGN, switching off to All My Children and General Hospital.  Sometimes, though, Kim would get sick of us and I would have to find other amusements in the scorching afternoons.  The only thing I had the energy for was reading.  I devoured the books from my mom and sister’s shelves:  The Winds of War (longer than it needed to be), Lolita (I thought she was a little brat), Shogun (where I learned about scurvy and how the Japanese were much cleaner than Europeans), The Day Kennedy Was Shot (I wanted to see the pictures of the gore so well-described).  It is pretty funny that Mom wouldn’t let me read Judy Blume’s Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and Then Again Maybe I Won’t because they were inappropriate. 

Until we moved to Rhode Island, it never occurred to me that we would have to spend a large amount on a normal house without a/c, when that same amount would have bought a McMansion in Indiana, complete with bonus room, 3^rd bay in the garage, and air conditioning.  After three weeks of using my fan on the chair method, we installed central air.  Yes, it cost a ton, but it has been worth every cent.

On Wednesday, the thermometer read 74 degrees at 6 a.m., and I knew running would be impossible.  So I did what any privileged white woman would do--I went to a hot yoga class.  I told the yoga studio owner about how heat raises cortisol which is a problem for those of us experiencing  perimenopause.   I also suggested that, since there are a lot of women my age who are probably feeling the same symptoms, maybe she could offer classes that were not heated.  She looked me in the eye and said, “I hear you.” She then proceeded to crank up the heat and teach a very active vinyasa class.  At the end of class, she talked about how we tell negative stories to ourselves and we should not believe them.  I knew she was talking to me, and since I felt so great, I had to laugh.  I even drove home with the a/c off and sunroof open to the blazing sun, singing very loudly to the Staples Singers.  I wondered if I wasn’t really heat averse, but just made that up.  It has been a long tale of woe, this battle I have with heat.  But what if it was just in my mind?   

Later that afternoon, it was 98 degrees when I walked across the concrete quad to teach the first class of the semester in Fogarty Hall.  The classroom was stifling.  There was just one lonely fan, very similar to the kind I had placed beside my bed so long ago, to cool off about 300 square feet.  Within five minutes, my dress was sticking to me and my brain downshifted into just one lament: must-get-out-of-here. My students and I abandoned this beautifully appointed classroom for a cramped space with a makeshift whiteboard and no digital technology, but with blessed air conditioning. 

If there’s a lesson here, I am sure it is that my dependence on air conditioning reflects a lack of character.  It reflects my privilege as well—I get to choose whether to be hot or not.  There are many New Englanders who see surviving the heat as a badge of honor with tales of mold growing on tables due to the humidity and sweating the second they step out of the shower.   Still others do not have a choice. 

We are currently experiencing the hottest summer on record in New England and there is no evidence that it is going to get better.  There is evidence that I am not alone in my cranky response to heat: hot weather increases crime.  I suggest that our politicians and scientists find and fund environmentally responsible ways to keep us cool.  And I solemnly pledge that if I ever win the lottery, I will pay for everyone to have air conditioning who wants it.