mind bending bendulum
July 27, 2008
It was an unrealistically humid day for Minneapolitans today. This made for some lovely running in and out of my air-conditioned house. There’s yard work that needs doing and food that needs grilling and the little miss wants to be outside and play but I can only change my shirt so many times before I finally understand why some men choose to go shirtless despite the fact that there exist other sighted people on the planet and their bodies seem to ignore that fact.
As I dashed into the house and stood in front of the air-conditioner it occurred to me that the cliche of telling one’s children to shut the doors in winter because they didn’t want to pay to heat up the whole neighborhood applies quite well to having the air-conditioning at full blast with the door open. Using my air-conditioner, and my car and my enormous can of hairspray, is heating up the neighborhood. And it always has been, we just didn’t know it before.
I know ignorance is bliss and sure it might be nice to be able to run an air-conditioner all day and only worry about the electric bill, if you worry at all. But, I like that I am fully aware as I fire up the cooling machine in my window I am deciding that a slight improvement of my comfort is more important than whether or not my daughter will ever be able to step outside as an adult.
That knowledge makes the cool wind all the more sweet.
LW
