Christmas in September

Mike "Saph" White -

1 The air conditioner went out. Picks the three hottest days at this point to be out until the guys can come and fix it. Yay. Heat. I dare say I love it dearly. *drips with sarcasm*2

So, we decided to go look for some window units. My daughter, wife, and I put our shoes on. We have those neat little rubber shoes with holes in them. I can’t remember what they’re called, but they have good arch support and work like sandals. This is good for me as my feet like to sweat a lot. Anyway, we load up into my best friend’s Cadillac because our van is not working very well and we’ve been borrowing his car.3 We borrowed his car for two reasons: 1. To not have to keep filling our van with power steering fluid. 2. For air conditioning because that’s also broke on our van.4 However, while borrowing it, his air conditioner stopped working also, so in 90 degree weather, we’re off to the stores. I love heat.

We pull up to Wal-Mart and practically run inside. However, my feet decided to sweat anyway, and for some reason feet don’t like to stay still on wet rubber. It’s quite slick. So, I’ll correct that, we STUMBLED inside of Wal-Mart. We head to the area where the fans and air conditioners are, and in their place, as determined by the marketing genius of the Wal-Mart corporation, are heaters. Little heaters. Big heaters. Skinny heaters. Heaters with remote controls. Heaters that use propane. Heaters that use electricity. If I was in the market for a heater, they’d have it. I ask someone where the air conditioners and fans are. “We don’t have any. But we have Christmas trees on sale.” I hope he was kidding. I love the heat.

We stumble back to the car, footprints of sweat trailing us, and head to Lowe’s. It’s only a block away. “They’ll have air conditioners. They’re Lowe’s. They’re big. They carry more of stuff like that.” At this point I’m wearing a shirt that is purely made of salt water molecules. It has transformed. I’ll call it my “ocean shirt.” So, we walk in and the air conditioner there creates an “iceberg shirt.” I’m now happy. I’m going to get an air conditioner. I walk to where the air conditioners are, and guess what I find? Heaters. Little ones. Big ones. Skinny ones. You know the drill. Of course, an aisle away are Christmas trees. I find someone and ask him where the air conditioners are. “We don’t have any. Want a tree?” I love heat.

So now, I sit at the computer in my renewed “ocean shirt” waiting for Thursday to come. That’s when the air conditioner guys come to fix ours. If they offer me a tree, I’m buying a rifle.

  1. This was originally posted on Sep 24, 2007, but I still thought it was funny so moved it over to the new blog. [↩]
  2. The *something between the asterisks* method of typing is usually used in Internet chat as a way of portraying an action the writer is taking. [↩]
  3. That’s a whole other rant that deals with being swindled out of money from a mechanic. I’ll share if you really want me to. [↩]
  4. Yet another rant. [↩]