Maybe that's why the recent heat and humidity seems more difficult to deal with - we're just not used to it.
As it turns out, the crops were missing the toasty temps and need the heat to finish growing on schedule.
We're just finishing the first several days in the upper 80s since July and have several more coming the middle of next week. As some might suspect, just in time for school. School in these parts start September 3 after the Labor Day holiday.
My guess is that the heat starting the school year means something quite a bit different now than it used to when I was heading off to school.
Back then, the only air conditioning in school came from a couple of windows and a box fan. Even in Wisconsin, many schools are equipped with machines to cool and dehumidify the air.
That's too bad - things are getting comfortable enough we are denying our children the opportunity to complain, to whine, to tell their kids how tough it was back in the early part of the century when they had to sweat through math and were sent to the showers after English class.
No doubt there will be something for them to complain about - their Ipad batteries running out in the middle of an online game during math class or the humiliation of handing in a homework assignment on actual paper when the home's wi-fi failed to work - yes, these are days of trial, for sure.
The heat... school... even having to walk up hill both ways on the way there are a generational touchstone and become part of the conversation within families as we seek to one-up each other when it comes to tales of our youth.
It reminds me of one of my favorite Monty Python routines:
- SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
- We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake.
- THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
- You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in the shoebox in the middle of the road.
- FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
- Cardboard box?
- THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
- Aye.
- FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
- You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down to the mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
- SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
- Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
- THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
- Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
- FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
- Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
- FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
- And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
- ALL:
- They won't!
- (Four Yorkshiremen routine - Monty Python)
May each of us be blessed with just enough misfortune and tough times to torment our kids and also remind ourselves of the abundant blessings that infuse and surround our lives.
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