I had meant to do an impressive essay today on food preservation as practiced by Himalayan Sherpa’s but my mind has wilted in the heat and it’s all I can do to roll the garbage to the curb and pant like an exhausted sled dog. Besides right now I’m caught up in a decision about draperies--pastels or primary colors? Pattern or plain, floor length, curtain rods or boxed, etc.? I usually leave these things up to my wife while I devote myself to weightier issues-- the collapse of the European Union, the Godhead Trinity—but the heat has thrown me way off.
Cold weather helps a man stay focused. This is a little-known fact. The thermometer plunges towards freezing and men are moved by primal urges to don heavy Carhartt clothing and hurl themselves into blowing snow, secure the livestock in the barns and then return inside with a haunch of moose for supper. But let the temperature climb to the nineties and those same men become fascinated with draperies, chopped basil and wear green plaid shorts and yellow flip-flops. The wife walks into the den buck naked covered in Mazola corn-oil stands between her husband and the TV, winks and the guy thinks, “ The cleaners! I was supposed to go by the cleaners.”
This increase in male confusion is directly related to global warming. No kidding.
Back when a winter was a winter men moved their tribes south to Florida, New Orleans or Six Flags. Men were able to walk about bare-chested and show off their washboard abs to attract women. Guys kept fit. You never knew when you were going to have to fight another tribe or pull an all-nighter on Bourbon Street and this kept men on their toes. But warming trends allowed people to remain up north like in New York and live in a climate that was neither very hot nor cold. Gradually as men began to wear shirts they lost the drive to stay buffed, they invented couches and then came the TV remote and bad cholesterol. Men didn’t know where they belonged or how to behave-- they became confused and short of breath.
Now thanks to medicine old geezers head for Miami or Arizona and you have Viagra induced love triangles popping up all over the country. These elderly would normally have passed the time playing bingo down at the lodge sipping an Old Fashion with bitters and complaining about the cold. They would have kept their hands to themselves.
Now men in their 70’s form hiking clubs, they surf and sky dive on the weekends. I tried to hike with a group of retired men not long ago, guys who should have been sitting in a nursing home watching the “The Price is Right” but were instead carrying pitons, climbing rope and lanyards. Just as we were walking out of the parking lot towards the trail I fell behind but bravely waved them onward. It was okay I shouted. I’d find my way back to the car.
Hold it a second. I’ll be right back.
Tic….tic….tic….tic….tic.
Whew, I’m back with some iced tea. Summers are better since I stopped drinking beer years ago and took up tea. With beer you get weepy, grab a buddy and start singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” but with tea you are alone and do solos, something in a high falsetto like “The Rose”. I really need to decide about those draperies. I have a secret fondness for Laced Nottingham’s, but that’s just me. My wife is the solid beige type.
I’m confused. What were we talking about?
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