Stewing In Our Own Juices

How hot is it? Well...if I walk out onto my shady front porch, sit down on a rocking chair, put my feet up on a stool, and slowly rock while fanning myself and sipping a cold drink, I will sweat so much that the salt runs into my eyes and hurts. It was 101 degrees this morning at 8:00 A.M. That was in the shade. I just now went out to turn the sprinkler on the tomatoes. The hose was too hot to touch. I gripped the hose with a hand that I covered with the bottom of my t-shirt, went ahead and turned on the cold water, and after two minutes, the water still ran hot. My glasses steamed up immediately I opened the front door. The weather has been like this for two and a half weeks. Out doors, I can just barely breathe. Today I had a long list of chores out and about. I began with some things I needed to drop off at the church office. By the time I got the stuff into church and went back to the car, my clothing was soaked with sweat.

I went on to the second stop, the Van Wyck Library. I had two items overdue and one damaged book to pay for so I went indoors. Both librarians looked sullen and unwilling to accept customers. When I came through the door, they turned away and pretended to be busy. It's hot in the library because some knucklehead propped open the door into the foyer. The librarians are droopy and cranky. How droopy and cranky? Well, I asked what was my fine and the librarian answered churlishly, "You can't pay it. Different last name." I said, "But I'm returning it for a grandchild." She said....get this...."I can't let you pay it unless you happen to know the child's last name." How many grandparents don't HAPPEN TO know the child's last name? I was sorry for the librarians in that they were so hot and miserable, but before I made a donkey of myself on the job, I think it would occur to me to stand up, go around the desk, close the door into the foyer and thus keep the cool air inside.

As I left, a homeless man came into the library, toting his garbage bag of stuff and smelling quite impressive. He looked down as he passed the librarians' desk. Both of them had ignored me, but seeing the poor fellow who just entered, they snapped to attention and stood up. Clearly they were about to unload on the luckless homeless guy all of their anger at a world too hot to bear. Ordinarily I would stick around and champion the underdog, but today, seeing the fire in their eyes, I scampered out the door and left the homeless guy to defend his own right to stink indoors. In this life you have to learn to pick your battles. Never defend a malodorous homeless guy to an angry librarian on a day when the temp outside the propped-open library door is 115 degrees.