Trares
Stepping outside felt like walking into a blast furnace.
Hot, humid air hung like a suffocating blanket. A breeze might have offered some relief, but there was none to be found.
Anthony summed up this week’s heat wave best.
“Ugggghhhhh, it’s so hot,” he proclaimed.
With a summertime heat dome parked squarely over central Indiana and much of the eastern half of the United States, we were reminded about the downsides of summer’s arrival. An incredibly pleasant May and June had lulled into a false sense of security, where warm days and pleasant nights made it imperative to hang around outside.
It was a rude awakening, then, when temperatures pushed into the 90s and a creeping humidity made even early Indiana mornings feel like swampy southern Florida.
The heat wave coincided with the start of Anthony’s soccer camp, slated to run mornings and early afternoons Monday through Thursday. We knew he would need plenty of water and a good lunch to keep him energized during drills and scrimmages, but as the reality of how hot it would be set in, we made additional plans.
A few more Gatorades went into his lunchbox. We laid out the most lightweight shorts and t-shirts we could find. Camp organizers had promised a frozen treat truck to be at the camp, so we sent along money so he could buy shaved ice to keep cool.
The heat didn’t deter Anthony, though. He had been looking forward to camp for weeks, and as we arrived at the fields in the morning, he was quick to dash off, soccer ball at his feet, to warm up.
Sure, he was sweaty and red-faced when we picked him up. But he was happy.
Not so much with the rest of the day, though. After cooling down in the A.C. for a little while, he started itching for things to do. I told him he could go outside, but, again, the proclamation: “It’s so hot!”
I was reminded of the summers when I was a kid. If we were lucky, we’d be able to lounge around in the air conditioning or in the basement, savoring the chilly repurposed air. But more often than not, we were sent outside to figure it out — whether that was playing in the sprinkler, finding some friends to go to the pool or nearby pond, or just sucking it up and riding bikes around town, regardless of the heat.
So once the most brutal heat of the day had passed, I tried to find refreshing activities that got both of us outside. We set up the sprinkler, tossed water balloons and hit up the neighborhood pool.
The hot spell looks like it’ll relent a bit this coming week, and even if not, at least our bodies have returned to mid-summer form. This won’t be the last time in the coming months the thermometer hits 90; plus, I always long for those kinds of days in the frozen depths of winter, so I shouldn’t complain.
I’ll just be sure to keep that sprinkler handy.
Ryan Trares is a senior reporter and columnist for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
