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On Air Conditioning
I can hear the echoes in my own words. I realize that saying something along the lines of , "I will never have or want any children," sounds a bit hollow in your early 20's. Who knows what might happen? But, right now, I don't want kids and that is a good thing since mine would probably tie me up on hot July and take advantage of my indisposition by buying an air conditioning. I would hope they would buy a wall unit somewhere locally, but the kids, angry at having their fish tank boil over, would probably buy it at a Wal-Mart, just to piss me off.
However hollow whatever edicts about children I say about children sound, I am solid about one thing.
This is not as crazy as it sounds. I do not take a hammer to central cooling units. Neither am I the Wicked Witch of Chill, melting whenever we get below 68 degrees. I just have an uneasiness to air conditioning. Whenever I sit in air conditioning (That I can control, mind you. I don't tell the bus driver to turn down the ac or scream at the movie theater manager), I feel as if I am getting away with something. An oscillating fan only takes the air around you and fires it onto your skin. While it is icky to think about it, fans help you sweat faster, making your natural evaporative cooling feel all that more satisfying. Air conditioners, on the other hand, have this Faustian ring to them. You don't need to sweat with ac as it brings the cool to you.
Hey, I like my body and marvel at its ability for homeostasis. When I cool off, I like to know that I aided natural processes like evaporative cooling and simple hydration. Air conditioning makes me feel lazy. And when you(like myself) spend summer already sitting around reading and re-playing every Grand Theft Auto game, you do not need to feel any lazier. If a fan is a nice walk down to the corner store, then air conditioning is hopping in your car to go down the driveway for the mail.
Please don't take this as some sort of insult to anyone that does use air conditioning. Hell, it is nice! And I realize that heat stroke is deadly serious. If you have a/c, then go nuts!* But, leave me to my little overheated zen.
Growing up in PR, everyone had a/c window units. If your house was newer or recently remodeled then you had central a/c or at least those slim Japaneses units that clung to the high walls like huge flies. Our house only had window a/c's and one for every room. The spaces in the walls featured black metal shelters for the outside half of the a/c. They were made of black bars and the air conditioner looked like it was in jail. I used to pretend these were escape pods, to be used if an hurricane with wind speeds greater than 145 mph** ever hit us!
And my mother let me turn on the air conditioner whenever I wanted! Woo hoo! I had a friend in school whose parents only let him turn on the air conditioner after 10:30 pm. Poor sucker, I thought. My mom was nice!
This was before I ever saw an electric meter or an electric bill. Our actual meter was outside the house, on a retaining wall against what used to be an alley. A schefflera*** tree blocked the meter, meaning you had to push the two story plant aside to read the meter. I once took a look at it when all the window a/c's hummed away and the disc looked ready for orbit. It was a "Holy Crap" moment, only intensified by the fact that it never got that hot where we lived. My first ever 100 degree weather was in Ithaca, NY! I spent my final two years in PR, sleeping only under the wobble of my ceiling fan.
When my father battled cancer, we ran the air conditioning in that room non-stop. There was a year where that a/c never turned off. Instead of getting such breaks, it would seem to let out a deep sigh, lag for a minute, and then hum back to life. I used to turn it off during those rare occasions he left the room, most often to enjoy some sun on the terrace. To little environmentalist Garik, the ancient a/c must have been spewing out CFC's! My parents lied to me in that way that only parents do. The kind of lies that take advantage of their parental status and make you believe that they can actually speak to a little bird of Santa Claus. They said there were no CFC's in the a/c, but I never believed them.
"You are killing the ozone layer, dad," I said to him!
He never replied, except with the lie, and it must have taken much will power to not respond, "And I am dying of cancer, kid!"
A/C units, particularly wall units, remind me off him. Of him with cancer. The room where he died always felt sickly with the huge sliding door glass windows perpetually boarded up. We put them up one summer for hurricane season and my mother, without the help of my father and with her back problems, never bothered to take them down. Because of this, the room felt cavernous. They had no house plants in the room (Not that any could of survived) and since the wall were a dulled peach color, nothing seemed lively. My father spent hours in a reclining chair by the corner and my mother would sit at the opposite end, at the foot of the bed, watching TV. And it was always cold.
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This version had a bit more stream of consciousness to it. I hope that everyone also realizes that there is no snobby hippie to my anti air conditioning diatribe. I have ranted about mean hippies before and the idea to where environmental actions on ones sleeve. I just can't bring myself to fire up the a/c, unless something else (like a guest sweating to death) makes me realize that no one else has this idiosyncrasy. Peace!
*Well, within reason. They are energy hogs and screw with your car's gas mileage!
**Another parental lie, except this one came from my mom's most serious boyfriend. He said no house in PR could resist such winds. And while these kinds of winds could only be described as "the hand of god," there are no such things as specific building strengths.
*** Yes, that schefflera that you often see in mall planters. Originally from Australia, it grows to the size of a house in tropical climates!
However hollow whatever edicts about children I say about children sound, I am solid about one thing.
No air conditioners!
This is not as crazy as it sounds. I do not take a hammer to central cooling units. Neither am I the Wicked Witch of Chill, melting whenever we get below 68 degrees. I just have an uneasiness to air conditioning. Whenever I sit in air conditioning (That I can control, mind you. I don't tell the bus driver to turn down the ac or scream at the movie theater manager), I feel as if I am getting away with something. An oscillating fan only takes the air around you and fires it onto your skin. While it is icky to think about it, fans help you sweat faster, making your natural evaporative cooling feel all that more satisfying. Air conditioners, on the other hand, have this Faustian ring to them. You don't need to sweat with ac as it brings the cool to you.
Hey, I like my body and marvel at its ability for homeostasis. When I cool off, I like to know that I aided natural processes like evaporative cooling and simple hydration. Air conditioning makes me feel lazy. And when you(like myself) spend summer already sitting around reading and re-playing every Grand Theft Auto game, you do not need to feel any lazier. If a fan is a nice walk down to the corner store, then air conditioning is hopping in your car to go down the driveway for the mail.
Please don't take this as some sort of insult to anyone that does use air conditioning. Hell, it is nice! And I realize that heat stroke is deadly serious. If you have a/c, then go nuts!* But, leave me to my little overheated zen.
Growing up in PR, everyone had a/c window units. If your house was newer or recently remodeled then you had central a/c or at least those slim Japaneses units that clung to the high walls like huge flies. Our house only had window a/c's and one for every room. The spaces in the walls featured black metal shelters for the outside half of the a/c. They were made of black bars and the air conditioner looked like it was in jail. I used to pretend these were escape pods, to be used if an hurricane with wind speeds greater than 145 mph** ever hit us!
And my mother let me turn on the air conditioner whenever I wanted! Woo hoo! I had a friend in school whose parents only let him turn on the air conditioner after 10:30 pm. Poor sucker, I thought. My mom was nice!
This was before I ever saw an electric meter or an electric bill. Our actual meter was outside the house, on a retaining wall against what used to be an alley. A schefflera*** tree blocked the meter, meaning you had to push the two story plant aside to read the meter. I once took a look at it when all the window a/c's hummed away and the disc looked ready for orbit. It was a "Holy Crap" moment, only intensified by the fact that it never got that hot where we lived. My first ever 100 degree weather was in Ithaca, NY! I spent my final two years in PR, sleeping only under the wobble of my ceiling fan.
When my father battled cancer, we ran the air conditioning in that room non-stop. There was a year where that a/c never turned off. Instead of getting such breaks, it would seem to let out a deep sigh, lag for a minute, and then hum back to life. I used to turn it off during those rare occasions he left the room, most often to enjoy some sun on the terrace. To little environmentalist Garik, the ancient a/c must have been spewing out CFC's! My parents lied to me in that way that only parents do. The kind of lies that take advantage of their parental status and make you believe that they can actually speak to a little bird of Santa Claus. They said there were no CFC's in the a/c, but I never believed them.
"You are killing the ozone layer, dad," I said to him!
He never replied, except with the lie, and it must have taken much will power to not respond, "And I am dying of cancer, kid!"
A/C units, particularly wall units, remind me off him. Of him with cancer. The room where he died always felt sickly with the huge sliding door glass windows perpetually boarded up. We put them up one summer for hurricane season and my mother, without the help of my father and with her back problems, never bothered to take them down. Because of this, the room felt cavernous. They had no house plants in the room (Not that any could of survived) and since the wall were a dulled peach color, nothing seemed lively. My father spent hours in a reclining chair by the corner and my mother would sit at the opposite end, at the foot of the bed, watching TV. And it was always cold.
_____________________________________________________________
This version had a bit more stream of consciousness to it. I hope that everyone also realizes that there is no snobby hippie to my anti air conditioning diatribe. I have ranted about mean hippies before and the idea to where environmental actions on ones sleeve. I just can't bring myself to fire up the a/c, unless something else (like a guest sweating to death) makes me realize that no one else has this idiosyncrasy. Peace!
*Well, within reason. They are energy hogs and screw with your car's gas mileage!
**Another parental lie, except this one came from my mom's most serious boyfriend. He said no house in PR could resist such winds. And while these kinds of winds could only be described as "the hand of god," there are no such things as specific building strengths.
*** Yes, that schefflera that you often see in mall planters. Originally from Australia, it grows to the size of a house in tropical climates!
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