Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 163
Walker
Continued from A1
tais. And, later, when you
stagger into bed, you have
to run the air conditioning
all night or wake up in the
morning with your sheets
sticking to you.
But the sunny parts of
these clammy days are to
be avoided at all costs. You
stay in an air-conditioned
building — or in a pool,
with only your lips and
that mai tai above water.
Don’t get me wrong.
This tropical weather does
have its potential. I dig a
thunderstorm and lightning, and all that. It’s just
that those anvil-shaped
clouds never seem to get
all the way over to the
SCV, and the tease of impending “action” that’s
never realized is just cruel.
Now, I accept that moisture is often a good thing.
Our bodies are supposed
to be about three-fourths
water. Our lawns seem to
need it from time to time,
and it really helps the boats
get around.
But moisture should be
the kind of thing you have
a choice about. You should
be able to take it or leave
it. It should stay in a glass
when you tell it to, or wait
politely in the pool for
you to dive in. It shouldn’t
jump you as you step outside your front door.
Air-moisture, by itself,
can definitely be felonious. I mean, it can suddenly squeeze out of the atmosphere and fall with the
sole intention of spoiling
your picnic. But when airmoisture and heat get together — well, you’ve got
a criminal gang. And as
with any other gang, a mob
mentality takes over, and
the innocent get hurt.
Let’s go back to that stepping outside your door in
the morning to go to work.
Of course, the ladies
among you will have a lot
more prep time invested,
but even you casual gentlemen out there will probably
have showered and glued
your comb-over in place.
So, in stepping out the
door, you have high hopes
of maintaining your grooming, at least until after the
morning meeting.
But as soon as your
front door closes, and
while you are remotely
unlocking your car in the
driveway — the gang assaults you from every direction. By the time you
get in your car and see
yourself in the rearview
mirror. … Well, your
clothes are wrinkled,
twisted and binding, your
hair hangs in tatters, and
if you were wearing makeup, boys, it’s running
down your cheeks. All
your morning’s efforts are
wasted.
The only bright side to
all this is that it provides a
built-in excuse to be lazy.
Some of you (and you know
who you are) take this
“time of the tropics” as free
license to avoid the morning’s grooming for days at a
time. Until your co-workers
can actually smell your lack
of effort, you can blame it
on the weather.
But getting mugged by
moisture and heat, often joined in the jump by
their associate gang members, smog and pollen, can
have other detrimental effects on your day. It can be
downright psychologically
discouraging. It just takes
away all motivation and,
by noon, you find yourself
dreaming of swim-up bars
as you sigh, “It’s 5 o’clock
somewhere.”
This is the whole concept
behind the siesta. When the
going gets tough, the tough
take a nap. And then they
wake up later, when it’s
cooler, and attempt some
sort of productivity.
I am absolutely positive
that we, in Southern California, would be a siestakind-of-community without
the false and intermittent
climate provided by air
conditioning.
And there would be a
whole lot less of us, too.
So as much as air conditioning is our friend, it is
also a crutch (and an expensive one at that). Air
conditioning is sort of like
a reverse prison. It keeps
the gang members off
our backs, but it keeps us
trapped behind the wall.
Hmm … what to do, what
to do?
Well, it’s all too much to
think about right now. So
I’m going to turn on the
air and take a siesta — and
dream of entire summers
spent on vacation enjoying
Hawaii’s balmy breezes.
Comment at jwalker@
the-signal.com or Twitter @
DontSeriously.
