Think Cool Thoughts

It's 90 degrees in brooklyn today, with humidity.  In technical terms, it's stupid hot.  Julian and I spent the morning frolicking in the fountains at the library but at present it's really too hot to go out.  I just took out and sorted the recycling and almost died.  I get a little idol-worshippy in the summer (<-- just wrote that in a letter to a friend. 2nd time i'm using it. I'm not ashamed) and basically my heart belongs to my air conditioner. It's so good to us, so kind, so beautiful.   And if you don't have an air conditioner on this day then no open window, no fan can save you now.  You're pretty much left to go to some kind of chilly zen place, tapping into your mind to overcome the matter.  I'll help you out here:

1.  One of the first winters we experienced here, I learned the meaning of stupid cold.  I may have mentioned this already.  We were watching the news late one night and someone demonstrated the chill by throwing a pot of boiling water into the air and watching it freeze in an instant.  So we tried it.  We boiled a pot of water and went downstairs to test this theory.  We threw the pot of boiling water in the air and watched it instantly turn to snow.  It was crazy, and crazy cold. Stupid cold.

2. I went to a lot of Girls Camps in my youth.  One summer we camped in the high Uinta mountains in Utah.  It was summer, but it got cold at night. Very cold.  Someone brought an emergency blanket (that looks like foil) and we would put on a pair of socks, wrap a bit of the heat foil around our toes, and then put on another pair of socks.  Some people slept in sock-mittens and hats.  Those were some cold nights at camp.

3.  Sometimes if my hands are very cold, I like to stick them down Sean and Julian's backs, under their shirt.  I'm pretty sure my eyes would turn to flames and i would immediately slay whoever did this to me, but I really like to do it to them.  Sometimes I might even put an ice cube down and trap it in as long as i can before getting batted off (but i only do this to Sean... for now).

4. brainfreeze. brainfreeze brainfreeze BRAINFREEZE.

5. When i was a teenager, my bedroom was in the Arctic Annex of the house, in the basement. For some reason there was an invisible wall separating those two bedrooms (that made up the arctic annex) from the rest of the house and it was 10 degrees colder than the rest of the already chilly basement. Perhaps the heat vents were painted on, just an illusion, or installed merely for aesthetic purposes.  I don't know. But it was cold. My brother had it worse, but I remember jumping into my bed from the doorway and saying a silent prayer i'd make it through the night.  I took great care in not touching anything metallic so as not to adhere myself to it.

6. Remember playing in the snow for far too long and your feet and hands had long passed a comfortable temperature and you willed yourself to stay out a little longer, a little longer, even though snot had made a plaster cast of your face and your bum was nothing but a distant memory?

7.  Lastly, in the year 1996, my family got some tickets to see the Olympic Dream Team play in Utah.  This team consisted of Karl Malone, John Stockton, Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Reggie Miller, Shaquille O'Neal, Grant Hill, Hakeem Olajuwan.  Now,  I haven't watched basketball in at least 10-15 years, but I really loved it then.  My parents had 3 courtside tickets and for some reason they gave the 3rd to ME.  I was pretty psyched about this and I've even gone through my journal and found an excerpt:

July 16, 1996 [<-- except i had typed 1886] 

Oh, man. Let me tell you.  That Dream Team game was SO fun!! I sat on the front row with Mom and Dad.  It was so so so cool.  Grant Hill was trying to save a ball and fell on us. He apologized about 1,000 times.  He seems like a nice fellow.  You don’t even realize just how tall and big those players are until you’re on the court with them.  I was so paranoid that someone big like Shaq would fall on me or something.  That was THE coolest thing I’ve ever been to.

And that's about it. I hope it works.  Good luck!