Summertime and the Livin’ Is Freeze-y
by Karen Williams - Oviedo Voice - Sept. 11, 2003
What cruel trick of nature would place a cold person and a hot person in the same household?
Clad in sweat pants and flannel shirts, I pondered this question for several months. My son Joel, a recent college graduate, was home for the summer, and a bitter War-of-the-Thermostat ensued. Joel would turn the gauge to colder. I would turn it to hotter. He would turn it back to his preference; I would follow suit.
This continued for days until the cooling unit began to emit groans and growls. I recalled how, at a church I attended as a child, the cold people and the hot people kept re-setting the thermostat until the unit actually blew up during Vacation Bible School. (Everyone had to take a vacation from Vacation Bible School.) Hoping to stop short of such an explosion in my home, I gave in to Joel and became resigned to bundling myself up in July.
“It’s FLORIDA, Mom!” Joel reminded me when he noticed the ski mask. “It’s 90 degrees outside!”
“And it’s 90 degrees in this house, too,” I replied. “90 degrees BELOW zero! Could you PLEASE turn back the A/C? I can’t feel my feet.”
“Mom, you just need to exercise more and get your blood circulating.”
“I WOULD exercise,” I retorted, “but my joints are frozen into a locked position.”
So it went all summer, with Joel accusing me of having the metabolism of a corpse and my accusing him of keeping the house colder than a morgue. At best, the place was the temperature of a meat locker, and I fully expected Publix to pull up out in front and ask us to store some sides of beef.
But I should have been used to it. Growing up in Oregon, Joel delighted in winter. He would sleep with his window wide-open to the elements, and each night I was reduced to piling throw rugs in front of his bedroom door, desperately trying to seal the chill from the rest of the house. Sometimes he was late for school by the time I got all the rugs drug away so that he could exit his winter wonderland.
All through the elementary years, Joel refused to wear a coat. Neighbors and passers-by would comment about the little boy playing in the snow while wearing shorts and a tank top. I bought him coats with super hero designs, coats with cartoon characters, coats with sports team insignias, begging him to wear them, if not for his own sake, simply to keep me from looking like I was asleep-at-the-switch as a parent. Nothing doing. Finally I gave up and resigned myself to being jailed for child neglect. Maybe horizontal stripes and a leg chain would somehow look good on me.
And then there was high school football. Towards the end of each season, most players wore tights under their pants and long-sleeve shirts under their jerseys. Not Joel. Turning blue in the bleachers, I honestly couldn’t bear to watch him play. As I averted my eyes, other parents thought I was worried about injuries and came to comfort me. “It’s a rough game,” they would nod, patting my shoulder. Worse than that, it was a COLD game, enough to shiver me timbers at the very thought of Joel on that frosty field.
After a summer head cold, a sore throat, and a couple cases of the chilblains, I recently said goodbye to Joel as he prepared to drive off to begin law school. His car was loaded with the essentials: TV, video games, sports equipment, with not so much as a wind breaker anywhere to be found. After a hug, I said all the mandatory “mom” things: “Eat your veggies. Get plenty of shut-eye. Change your knickers.” I even mustered a tear or two, my tear glands beginning to thaw as I stood in the Florida sun.
Then, as Joel was out of sight, I uttered an ear-splitting “Yes!” and dashed inside to jack up the thermostat--my very own precious, adorable thermostat, at least until Joel Cool returned for Thanksgiving.
And then it occurred to me: Joel was driving to Miami in a car he’d had since high school--a car TOTALLY DEVOID OF AIR CONDITIONING. “There IS justice in this world!” I crowed, throwing my Russian hat in the air and peeling off my thermals.
All the freeon in Florida wouldn’t do him an ounce of good right now.
Copyright 2003, Karen Williams
