It's
a scorcher here today, 97 degrees. It doesn't help that I have really special
air-conditioning in my car. It works if I'm not accelerating. So
I'm the crazy car pulling away from the light at supersonic
speed, reaching cruising altitude, taking my foot off the gas, and
THEN the fan blows again. Once I'm at speed, I can push ever so
slightly on the gas, and the fan will keep blowing. However, I do
most of my driving as a taxi-cab, so it isn't often I can really get
the car cool. This totally reminds me of the (one) summer Farmor and
Farfar came to visit from Sweden.
Up
until the summer of 1976, they had always visited during the winter,
but they wanted to try a summer in America. In Maryland. In the
humidity. They didn't know what they were getting into. Sweden is a
country where they count sun-days, as in, “The summer of '47 we had
16 sun-days.” As in the sun came out that day. A summer high is
in the 70s.
It
was a good thing that it was also the summer we got a family
membership to a private swimming pool club nearby. We spent almost
every day there. Farmor especially suffered from the heat. I
remember giving up my seat in the front so that she could aim all the
AC vents her way, but still, by the time we got to the pool, she'd be
soaked. She'd get out of the car and declare, “Det är
varmt I America!” It's warm in America. That is a saying we still
use in our family. Farfar would reply, “Ja, något
so collosalt!” Yes, so colossally! Can you imagine the climate
change?
We
did enjoy the pool. I learned to jump off the high dive. My sister
and I invented double-butt bumpers. Bear with me here, use your
imagination, and try to picture this. We hold hands, hold our
breaths, we have our feet touching, and as we go under water, we try
to bump our butts together. It's a trick with about a one in six
chance of success. We tried forever before we ever hit our first
one. Yes, this is weird. If you don't have a sister, or a brother,
you probably won't ever understand where games like this come from.
We
also learned to do somersaults underwater, how to swim the length of
the pool in one breath, and how to stay cool during adult swim. We
hated adult swim. We'd sit on the edge of the pool, like the good
little girls we were (12 and 10) until the lifeguard starting flirting with
the other lifeguard, and then we would lightning fast slide off the
edge, dunk under water, and lickety split be back up on the edge
picking our fingernails by the time they looked again. Only got
caught once. “Sorry, I slipped.” “Don't “slip” again”.
It
was a good summer, but the heat took it's toll on my beloved
Grandparents. They didn't come back for a summer again, and we never
had a pool membership again, but the phrase remains, “Det är
varmt I America!” It sure was in Colorado today.
Do
you like the heat, or are you heat phobic like me? Have you ever
played ridiculous pool games with a sibling? Please tell...
