Summer is fast approaching, which means it’s almost the time of year that sweating profusely — even when the sun’s not out — becomes a common thing. Be sure to keep deoderant and perfume or cologne handy so as not to offend those around you. | Photos.com
Hot weather has come early this year. I am quickly approaching my seventh year living in Houston, but I still have not managed to acclimate myself to the heat and humidity. There is a long running joke in my family that anywhere you go in the world will have better weather than Houston. My father has been working in Siberia for a couple of years and he still makes this joke, so there must be some truth to it.
I can’t imagine how miserable the summer months, really two-thirds of the year, must have been for Houstonians before the invention of air conditioning and bottled water. I picture them stumbling through their days yearning for a glass of tepid water and then a quick death somewhere in the shade.
Things really haven’t changed that much. Students must endure long walks between classes on nearly molten cement, not to mention even longer walks to their parked cars. Because of these miserable walks, I find myself limiting my campus mobility during the warmer months of the year. During the winter I aimlessly wander around campus during my free time. I am shifty and can’t study in the same place for too long. I guess I have wanderlust on a small scale.
However, during the warmer months of the year, my study spot is usually a spot on the floor in the closest building to me. I also sometimes find myself eating lunch from vending machines in whatever building I am in so I can further limit my time spend outside.
I enter every class in a state of heat-induced malaise, thinking there must not be a God if such weather exists, or that I am possibly already in hell. After I fail to work out any philosophical argument for this, I spend the remainder of whatever class I am in fantasizing about taking naps in meat lockers or getting frostbite.
I become a bad student during the warmer months. I have missed class on several occasions because I didn’t want to deal with walking to class in the heat, or having to wait 20 minutes for my car to drop below 80 degrees during my commute.
I find the humidity offensive and totally unnecessary. Literally within a minute of walking outside on particularly humid days, I find myself sweating profusely, and I am not someone who generally sweats a lot when I am in other climates. An extra stick of deodorant and a bottle of cologne are a constant companion to the books and notebooks in my backpack during these months. I reapply them throughout the day, worried I will offend people sitting next to me in class even though they are probably concerned about the same thing.
There are times that I wish I had no immune system so I could just walk around campus in a giant air-conditioned plastic bubble during the summer months. Sure, my dating life would take a major hit, but I could sit in my air-conditioned bubble and philosophize about how my situation really wasn’t that bad while watching healthy students trudge to class.
It’s only March and it is already quite hot out. I look forward to being made miserable by the heat with the rest of you for the next 8 to 9 months, the length of Houston’s summer.
