It Didn't Seem To Matter

I have become a wimp. I admit it. I'm not even ashamed of it.

I simply can no longer handle the heat. Anything over 80 degrees is bad. Over 90 is unbearable.

I grew up in St. Louis. St. Louis is well known for its oppressive heat and humidity and we didn't have air conditioning.

Not at home.

Not in the car.

Not at school.

I couldn't take that today, but it didn't seem to matter to us back then.

The Liberty supermarket had air conditioning and it was always a lot of fun to walk into the store through the wall of cold air they created at the entrance to separate the store from the oppressive outdoors. Many of the other large stores had air conditioning, too, but we rarely went to any of them.

Today, I largely move from my air conditioned home to my air conditioned car and then from the car into my air conditioned office. The course is reversed at the end of the day; my time away from air conditioning kept to an absolute minimum.

We also used to play outside all summer long. Granted, we had a pool for a number of years and access to a pool for years after that, but our lives didn't revolve around staying cool. We just played outside in the heat.

I avoid being outside for any significant amount of time on hot summer days now, but it didn't seem to matter back then.

We even used to go camping in the heat. Vacation normally consisted of spending a week at a campground; often Meramec State Park. We camped whenever Dad's vacation week arrived. If it was hot, then we camped in the heat. We even built campfires each night; somehow oblivious to the oppressive heat.

We had a massive canvas tent that Dad sprayed with a water repellent each season, or so. The water repellent served several purposes, both intended and not so intended. It did, as the name implies, repel water to keep the tent's occupants from getting soaked during a summer storm. In fact, it was very good at that job; maybe too good. Water didn't come in and water didn't go out. The inside of the tent would be damp with the condensation of our breath each morning.

As a side effect of creating that water repellent barrier on the canvas,the spray pretty much completely blocked air from moving through the canvas, too. The interior of the tent would grow hot and stale, even with the windows open, once the six of us were tucked into our sleeping bags for the night. A breeze may provide a bit of relief, but there was typically no relief during a Missouri summer night.

I could never survive in a tent in conditions like we have had over the last week, but it didn't seem to matter back then.

Maybe part of the problem is that I am no longer acclimated to the heat since I have lived in Wisconsin for nearly three decades. The cold doesn't bother me a bit, but the heat has become intolerable.  While being acclimated might account for part of the problem, it certainly doesn't explain everything.

I know too many people who grew up in Missouri, stayed in Missouri and still live in Missouri who would trade their firstborn child instead of giving up their air conditioning. They should still be acclimated, but they're not.

Maybe it's just because we have wimped out. A temperature controlled life is just too easy to have now, so we have forgotten how to deal with the heat.

Whatever happened and however it happened is, ultimately, irrelevant.

I have become a wimp.