Sunday, September 1, 2013

Humidiphobia


It runs in families. I first noticed symptoms in my children when they wanted the air conditioning on when it was only 65 degrees out but humid. Soon they refused outdoor activities due to moisture. It went downhill from there. The malady needed a name, so I came up with “Humidiphobia.” I’m also a victim and clearly the reason my children suffer so. It wasn’t always this way.

I grew up on the Ohio River. If you are unfamiliar with summers in the Ohio River valley, they aren’t pretty. Well, I suppose they are ‘pretty,’ but only because the humidity hovers around the 87%- 97% mark for months on end and foliage loves that. In those days not every house had air conditioning. Actually, It didn’t matter much to me because I spent all my summers at camp.

Yep, at camp!! I was not shipped off by busy parents where I could remain occupied while school wasn’t in session. I wanted to go!! For as long as possible!! During my teen years I managed to stay up to five weeks at summer camp and loved every minute of it. We had cold showers, latrines (which means non-flushing toilets,) a twenty-minute hike down hill and back up again to and from every meal. Tell that to kids these days….

We swam in a lake and had ‘jungle breakfasts’ where the kitchen staff woke up early and hung our breakfast from the trees outside our canvas platform tents. Hot at night? Roll up the side flaps and let the breeze and the bugs fly right on through. I still remember the smell of the creosote in the dining hall. All the words to all the songs we’d sing after all the meals are imbedded in my brain. There was a paper mill on the river upwind from camp and the moisture in the air transported the manufacturing odors right to camp. If you’ve not had the privilege of smelling paper mill waste, you really haven’t lived. You could buzz down to the local sewage treatment plant on a nice, hot, steamy day and take a long whiff. Ah! You will have lived then!!

I remember the scenery and the friends and the songs and the crafts and the swimsuit I was wearing the day I jumped off the diving board and broke my toe. But, the humidity? Nadda. I was immune. It might have been a gift of childhood or a gift from the sixities when air conditioning was scarce.  I’m not sure. I also didn’t know any better. I moved from Washington DC to the Ohio River Valley. Both are full of humidity survivors and I was one of them.

Humidiphobia came on quickly one college summer when I moved to Colorado. Cold air in the summer?! Clear blue skies?! Blankets?! Hiking without dripping in sweat after ten steps?!  I was smitten. My life changed dramatically once I knew there was life beyond humidity.

I live in a northern climate now.  We have these nasty stretches of hot humid weather, but we also know they will end and not hang around for months on end. I’ve raised kids here and they aren’t immune to hot, nasty weather. When they were little and we did not have air conditioning, we had to play all the games families do to avoid summer misery:  go to the library, go to the museum, get invited to someone else’s house, place fans strategically, close off rooms, shut windows early in the day, etc… Those days must have scarred them and woken up the Humidiphobia gene. On the list when we chose our current home: Central Air Conditioning. I have never looked back. We don’t use it all summer because we are blessed with many gorgeous, sunny, dry days. I’m sorry to say I don’t feel global warming guilt on days like today when I keep the AC running. I’m a weather wimp and do confess I have passed that onto the next generation. I don’t want to go back to summer camp either.  

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