First Posted: 7/16/2013
Editor’s note: This article was written circa 2008.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t we have really high barometer-busting temperatures when we were kids? I distinctly recollect sweating, so it must’ve been hot back in the day. I also remember at 6 or 7 years-old coming home from school, stripping and standing completely naked in front of the open door of the freezer.
That was my air conditioning.
I ponder all of this because I don’t understand why, as parents, we feel our children need air conditioning in their bedrooms when we clearly had the same heat and did just fine with one little fan. And, not even a window fan, mind you. We had a little, black iron fan which was so dangerous that when you stuck a pencil into the blades (as my sister was inclined to do), they would chew it up and spit it out like a chain saw.
I was terrified of that fan, (more so after my brother inserted Skipper’s blonde head into it and I was left with only her decapitated torso), but we worked with it.
And really, tough luck if you sweat so much your pillow case had to be wrung out twice a night.
My boys have been whining like their tails are on fire every night for the last week because their bedroom “is, like, 250 degrees Mom! I’m not kidding! The hamster is wheezing! You can, like, bake tollhouse cookies in there!” (At this, my younger son cocks his eyebrow and whispers: ”Really?!”)
After the third night of fairly pro-active imploring on their part and blank stares of refusal on mine, my boys took mattresses into their own hands. They dragged, pulled and yanked everything from their rooms into our bedroom. The only thing they left were the box springs and their dresser. Oh, and all the dirty clothes and wet towels balled up on the floor. When we went to bed that night, here is what we saw: two sets of every blanket in the house, seven pillows, trophies, baseball photos and medals. Also, two CD players with headphones, action figures, paper and crayons, stuffed animals (artfully arranged by size under my window), travel mugs of Gatorade, graham crackers, chocolate chips and Fluff. They had our air conditioner cranked up to ultra-maximum and were enjoying a resort-like evening of kicking back and reading comic books in the Villa which I used to call my bedroom.
Point taken, brats.
But I wouldn’t give in.
I stepped over their insta-bedroom setup and put on my jammies, turned out the light and went to bed. They weren’t happy. They wanted to stay awake and chat, have a s’more, gossip, watch Letterman or maybe, if I fell asleep, The Girls Next Door. This is not Camp Heck, I told them – as long as you’re bunking in my tent, you’ll play by my rules. (Yes, I really said that).
Instead of whining about being hot they were now whining about not being tired.
Who are these monsters and when is their real mother coming to claim them?
This scenario played out each night for a week. Things went downhill fast after I got up to do my duty one night and stepped on my 10-year-old’s shoulder and his vibrating, color-changing, musical alarm clock, damaging both with my Sasquatch foot. This happened again the next night with the only difference being a bruised femur on my other son. In addition, they realized that old women need more sleep than degenerates of their age and they really did not enjoy summertime lights-out before 10.
They decided a little cool air was not worth all the rules, regulations and maimed body parts. They are back on their own reservation now with the fan trained directly on both their sweaty little faces. I know that Barbie is safe from this fan because it’s been attempted, in addition to kabob sticks, straws and a Slinky.
The misery has temporarily ceased and I am considering myself lucky that no one has thought to stand exposed outside my Frigidaire.
Including me.
Yet.