Yes, It's Hot Enough For Me, Thanks . . .

At the risk of looking like someone who's fast approaching the bottom of his creative well, I think I'd like to talk about the weather. I might be stooping a little low in the topic department but, I'm sorry, 115 is just too many degrees. It's hard to imagine how life in Utah's Dixie was possible before the advent of air-conditioning. It couldn't have been this bad back in pioneer times. Because if I would've been one of our founding fathers, and it was this hot, you would've found me up to my neck in the Virgin river, wearing a big hat. I'd sharpen a stick, pretend like I was fishing and just stand there in the water all day--maybe try to squeeze in a little farming between sunset and dusk. The good brethren would've been check'n me out, talk'n about, "Hezekiah, please get out of the river--your crops are all dying." "Better them than me," I'd tell'em, "now leave me alone, you'll scare the fish."

I've never done well in the heat though, I don't see how people manage to work through a day out there in it--my big hat's off to you. Personally I'm not equipped for temperatures in the teens, I scramble around town like a cockroach caught in the kitchen. And I'm either too lazy or too dumb to remember to put up my silver sun-blocker things--even though I can barely see out my back window because I can't figure out how to fold the damn things up. (They're supposed to twist together down to the size of a Frisbee bah dah bing), but every time I start twisting, they fly up in my face, knock my sunglasses off--I end up looking like Jerry Lewis (that's French for Jim Carrey)--I gave up on 'em.

But I pay. Each time I return to my car--with it's searing vinyl seats and faulty air conditioning--I pay. My car has seen better days and sometimes I don't have the heart to turn on the air conditioning. The poor old thing, it's like kicking it in the nuts--"pleeeease noooo," it practically screeches to a halt. I guess I could look at this as an added safety feature--if my breaks were ever to go out, I could just turn on the A.C. Dumb joke, let's move on.

The scariest part of all this is that sometimes I'm forced to steer my vehicle without touching the wheel. You know those steering wheels that have the little finger grooves molded in? Mine didn't used to have them. Sometimes my steering wheel is so hot that I have to navigate my car with a series of quick slaps. I don't have power steering, so they have to be some pretty good smacks too--left turn, bam bam, right turn, bam bam bam. I certainly hope the cops never see me doing this. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to whack your steering wheel around while your driving--they'd want to have a little chat with me about it.

Anyway, thank the good Lord for these storms we've been getting lately, because I was beginning to worry. When it starts to flirt with 120, I become plagued with the notion that it might just keep getting hotter and hotter. What's to stop it, history? What if the temperature started to rise by one degree every day? I shared this paranoid concern with a friend of mine who's an expert on global warming . . . "one degree every day. hmm?" After hours of intensive calculation he concluded that by the end of the 17th day, life on earth would totally suck.

We're sailing along at a pretty comfortable clip lately, but those storms that finally cooled us off were as spooky as the heat. Lightning displays right out of the book of Revelations. Mesmerized, one night, I was watching the hardest torrent of rain I've ever seen, slam by the light of a street lamp--and I swear, I saw the rain beat a bird right out of the sky. Honestly, it came fluttering down, still trying to fly, almost as though Mother Nature was saying "where you goin' feather-boy?"

But we get through it all though, the heat has claimed over a thousand lives nationwide, but nobody's dying around here, and it's hotter here. I'd like to think it's because we do a good job of looking out for each other --probably so, plus there's plenty of air conditioning to go around. Most folks seem to take the heat in stride pretty well--I hear people say "hey, go to the lake." " Navajo lake?" "Hell no, Lake Mead. Laugh in the face of death." While on this topic the other day, I made the mistake of confessing to one of my wife's friends that I'd never managed to get up on one water-ski, and blamed this shameful inadequacy on my weight. To which she patiently explained that weight has nothing to do with it, it's all about how coordinated, strong and intelligent you are. Okay, so I guess what's really holding me back with watersports is the fact that I'm clumsy, weak and stupid. Alright. Maybe I should just stay by the shore and just stand in the water with a big hat. No really, I'm fine. I'm fishing.