Roberto Pela
Roberto Pela
On the last day of May, summer is still a few weeks away in most of the country, but Arizona is already in the triple digits. And it will be for the foreseeable future.
For KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela, it’s time to say goodbye to short days, long pants and the outdoors.
Summer is here. And you are a completely new person. You’re a new you and learning to love summer, one third degree burn at a time.
Where you once smelled like your favorite department store cologne and occasionally, right after lunch, a sandwich, today you smell like self-tanner and bleach; sunscreen and perspiration. You look different, wrapped in skimpy, chiffon garments designed for maximum airflow. You sound different too, your voice dry and hoarse from yelling at your children, who are everywhere at once, all the time.
Suddenly things appear that you haven’t seen in a long time. Your knees, for example, protruding from diaphanous cotton shorts. Also that basket of flip flops in the corner of the closet where you once kept the right pairs of shoes. And big blisters on your feet, because you keep forgetting about the basket of flip flops in the corner of the closet.
If June has changed you, it has also changed the world around you. The sun, which seems to appear shortly after 3 in the morning and stays, you swear, until almost midnight, illuminates a world that lacks things you knew last spring. Like a steaming espresso, now replaced by thin, icy frappuccinos. Also long pants. His lush green lawn is gone, along with the fragile boxwood hedge he tended during the November desert frost. In its place is an expanse of crunchy brown and a row of charred stumps, despite the thousands of gallons of expensive water you’ve pumped into your infinitely thirsty plot of land.
Also missing are all the part-time residents whose company you’ve become so accustomed to: driving 17 miles per hour on the highway; arguing with cashiers about penny-off coupons; Appearing out of nowhere, radiating mortality.
Somehow you feel lighter, perhaps because you’ve replaced regular meals with diet shakes designed to keep your little summer wardrobe buttoned up and zipped properly. Your wallet is lighter, too, thanks to those $600 monthly water bills and those family vacations to Maui cut short by heat stroke and an allergic reaction to pineapple daquiris. It turns out that weekly pedicures, necessary because you live in open-toe shoes these days, are very expensive. So is the gym membership that replaced your daily walking routine. In the gym, you intensify your personal hydration level. The new person is mainly bottled water imported from Guam.
It’s not just that the summer world seems different. Your relationship with him has changed. Where you once chose a restaurant based on appetite and cuisine and maybe whether the waiters were cute, now you only care about whether or not the establishment offers a covered patio with vaporizers. Outdoors, you nervously scan the horizon for areas of shade or a door leading inside, where there’s air conditioning.
Even your relationship with your car has changed. Now you drive with a floppy hat that you keep in the freezer and oven gloves to avoid nasty steering wheel burns. You’ve been thinking about installing an auto-start feature to cool down your car before you get in it, and you’ve turned your glove box into a cooler filled with Otter Pops and radiator coolant.
You can tell that others have grown tired of your descriptions of Phoenix as an “oven” and your jokes about the surface of the sun. As an apology, you decide to embrace this arid and burning city; to open our arms to the sun and celebrate a summer stained with sweat and with little clothing.
Walking out to do it, you burn your hand on the front doorknob and change your mind about embracing the sun. Back inside, you settle into the darkest, coldest room in the house, where you plan to watch “Northern Exposure” and “Big Hair Alaska.” The world will have to wait for your summer-loving version. In fact, they may have to wait until October.
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