Dear Bill:
According to sites like this, a lot of people have a problem with the word "moist." I mostly don't understand the antipathy, because there are many situations when moist is better than not. Moist can lead to wet, which is a muchly desired status in the summertime. Plus, there's the onomatopoeia; "moist" is such a moist word. Like "squelch." And "Colmes."
Every once in a while, however, the moistophobes have a legitimate beef. Saturday was one of those onces. Thanks to you.
I'll grant you that this was largely a soup of my own making, because since August 1, when the Times reported that NYC might have its coldest summer ever, I made the admittedly ridiculous bet that I would make it through the summer without buying an air conditioner. I made this hubristic claim after 1o days in New England, where it is customary to huddle around your coffee in the morning until it's warm enough to swim. I may have been high on pine needle fumes. Or Lyme diseased.
The point is, the LOD ThreeTM were ready. We had the resolve. We had the countenance. And we knew we'd be OK as long as we had my shitty box fan, which reliably blew things around well enough when it got stuffy. We figured we could make it to Labor Day without burning one BTU.
Then came you, who turned away that lovely cold front, sent us 15-foot waves that closed the beaches, and filled my lungs with air you could frost a cake with.
Saturday was supposed to be Inertia Day. We made no plans. We'd just got back from another week in the Breezy Northern Crispiness, packed with cousins and friends and campfires and me throwing children off the dock until I couldn't lift my arms anymore. We needed a chill day, just to hang around and be. Which sounds good, until I remembered that the two things most likely to make me want to peel the skin off my face are 1) stifling humidity and 2) sitting around the house all day.
The air was more than moist. It was greasy enough to make the LEGOs I stepped on stick to my feet, so I'd step on them again. The movie we rented was scratched to pieces, so we missed half of it. We got grumpy, and the boys took it out on each other. Then, as I broke up my 100th slapfight, I knocked over the fan. It slammed to the floor, and one of the blades cracked off and rattled around in its cage. And even though it can still generate a breeze, its torque is off-kilter. So if you leave it on a hardwood floor, its skitters around like a chihuahua with Parkinson's.
I guess I owe you thanks for making Saturday such a nightmare, because we three felt the need to overcompensate. We spent Sunday at the beach, marveling at the still-nasty surf, and Monday at Hurricane Harbor, infusing our souls with chlorine.
There's nothing like a day of revolting, inescapable moisture to make a man want to spend the next two days aggressively wetting himself.