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Hot, Hot, Hot!

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VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor I n case you haven’t noticed, it’s hot outside. And when I say “hot” I don’t just mean it’s your typical summer day. It’s like “equator hot” as Robin Williams’ character in “Good Morning Vietnam” said.

Sure, it gets hot around here every summer, but this is one of those times that really makes you think that whole “global warming” thing is starting with Crittenden County. We’ve been in the 90s all week and there doesn’t appear to be a break on the horizon. In fact, my weather app on my phone says to expect a high of 98 degrees tomorrow and Friday before “cooling” down to a mere 95 on Saturday. Even the overnight lows are in the mid-70s so I think it’s safe to call it a heatwave.

Now, I will say, after last winter when it was literally zero outside for a couple of days and we had one of the biggest snows ever, given my choice between the two extremes, I’ll still take the heat every time. I might be in the minority on this one, but I find it much easier to cool off in the summer than to warm up in the winter. The cold doesn’t really bother me, but if I do get cold, I tend to stay cold. There aren’t enough blankets and cups of hot chocolate in the world to shake the chills off for me once it hits, but I can always get cooled off in the heat by finding some AC, a fan, a pool or even a water hose.

But it sure is hot. I do have some sympathy for those who have to work outside. I suppose it’s pretty easy for me to sit here in my office and sip sweet tea while someone else is out there, say working on a farm or roofing a house or whatever and talk about “Man, it sure is toasty out there” but I’d still take 90s over 20s. I don’t know if we’re breaking any records or anything though, because this is far from the hottest summer ever around here. I don’t watch the local news much these days, but I assume when the local weather report comes on they still give you the historical record low and record high for the day. I do remember that in the summer time the record high this time of year almost always comes from 1980.

I was only 6 going on 7 years old in 1980, but I promise you I still remember the terrible heat that year. I got an awful sunburn that summer, like where I had blisters on my shoulders that filled up with fluid and looked like snow globes. I peeled like a molting lizard and I can still picture my mom pulling dead skin off my arms and legs in sheets. I’m pretty sure she covered me and my sister in oatmeal to treat our sunburns, but that might have been a different summer (I’m sure that sunscreen was probably a thing back then but I don’t remember ever putting it on … that’s probably why my shoulders are, as my daughter puts it, “one big freckle”).

There were other really hot summers growing up. When I was 12 or 13 (so 1985 or 1986), I managed to get a weird sunburn through my baseball jersey at the Little League District Tournament. It was one of those mesh-like shirts with the tiny air holes in it and I burned through the holes. I looked like I had a rare case of geometrically-patterned measles. Years later, when my oldest son, unbeknownst to either his mother or me, put on tanning accelerant in lieu of sunscreen once while swimming at his aunt and uncle’s house and got a sunburn that rivaled my 1980 snow globes. It’s probably because of that incident that my wife now covers all the kids in sunscreen like she’s putting mustard on a corndog.

Yes, I’ve had some run-ins with the heat in my adult days as well. The scariest of those was about seven years ago when I was playing in a 4-on-4 sand volleyball tournament over at the Marion Methodist Church (if you drive past the Marion Police Department on Highway 77 with any regularity, you’ll know the one I’m talking about). Now up until that day, I had been hot and I had been dizzy at times in my life, but the perfect storm of a sunny day and maximum exertion in the sand had me in a bad way.

My team was playing in what I believe was the game that we had to win to make it to the championship game. I don’t really remember what the score was or anything but I do remember beginning to see little black specks in my vision. I also remember rotating to the back row for my turn to serve … and then nothing. The next thing I remember was laying in the sand over in the shade by the fence while my teammates poured water on me. I don’t know if it was an official heat stroke or heat exhaustion or what, but I did not play any more volleyball that day. And I’ve been a lot more careful ever since about that sort of thing.

So if you get out there in the heat, stay hydrated, take it as easy as you can and don’t overdo it. And if you just can’t take anymore of it, just hold on. Winter will be here before you know it!

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