I don't think there is much debate anymore about why the planet is warming, even George W addmitted at the G-8 summit a couple of weeks ago that human activity was having an effect on the environment. He didn't offer to do anything about it, because reducing emissions will adversely impact his richest donors. There is no sure way to predict how bad the warming of the planet will be, but there are a few scenarios out there, none which are optimistic.
Closer to home, Americans are feeling the heat (literally) from decades of driving whenever and where ever we wanted, decades of using six times as much energy as the rest of the industrialized world, and never really thinking that the day would come when our energy glut would come to a sweaty, steamy end. Here in Washington, it's been in the high 90's for the last six days, and a heat advisory has been in effect for at least a week. The heat advisory, like the Homeland security warnings, are color coded, and keeping them straight can be tricky. For example, there is an alert for the subway that is colored orange, and a heat advisory that is colored yellow. If you get them confused, you might think that we are under attack and run outside and die of heat stroke, or the reverse could happen, you might think that the red alert pertains to the heat index and fail to evacuate the building that is about to explode.
For a week, I have been sitting around in my underwear, never far from an air conditioning vent. In this heat there is never any need to use the restroom, all you have to do is stand outside for five minutes, and all of your excess body fluids will stream out of your pores. I haven't put on make-up since June, it immediately melts from your face the minute you get in your car. It's so hot that I'm beginning to speak with a southern drawl, it takes way to much energy to pronounce two separate words such as you and all, when y'all means the same thing.
I had a rare Saturday off this week, and my partner A. had a morning tee time at 10 am. One of the great things about working in retail is having to work weekends, and missing the weekly golf game. A. loves golf, she's actually pretty good at it, and she loves it when I am able to golf with her. She thinks that it is quality time that we can spend together, and I think that she likes to golf with me because I'm so bad at it, that by comparison, she plays like Anika Sorenstam. Anyway, if I don't golf when I have the day off, A. is not happy, and when A.'s not happy, no one is happy, least of all me. There are certain things that you must do for love, in spite of how painful they may be. On Saturdays when I have the day off, I get out my golf shoes and polo shirt, take a deep breath, and hit the ball twenty yards outside of the Tee. If I'm lucky, I don't have to chase the ball into the woods and the long grass. Even if I hit it straight down the fairway, I still have to hit it six or eight times before the ball makes it to the green. Golf is an exhausting and humiliating sport, and the only good thing about it is that it eventually ends, or the beer lady drives up with refreshments, and your lousy putt can be momentarily forgotten.
This particular Saturday was 97 degrees with a heat index of 115. I found my golf outfit and shoes, applied some sunscreen and said three Hail Marys, so that my humiliation might not be so absolute today, and that an electrical storm might cut the game short. Mere rain is not enough to stop golf torture, my partner A. and my friend Sue just play on until it begins to thunder. A. and I arrived at the course and the moment I stuck my tee into the ground, sweat began to form and run into my eyes. I swung wildly at the ball four or five times before I made contact and hit it ten feet in front of me into the weeds. Six swings later, I was on the green sweating, exhausted, and my sunscreen melting from my face. On the fairway right behind us were two well dressed and somehow, not sweaty blond gurls waiting for me to finish my fourth putt. I wanted to tell them to play through, but there was something about the outfits they were wearing that irritated me. They were perfectly coiffed, not a bead of sweat on them, or a hair out of place. The make-up they wore was perfectly intact, not an eyelash was smudged. One of them was even wearing pearls. Pearls. I'm lucky if my socks match at 10 am on a Saturday morning.
In the intense heat, I was beginning to find my golf Zen, that point at which you no longer care how many balls you have hit into the water, you just want the game to be over. I relaxed a bit and began to chant my golf mantra, "Hit the f---ing ball, hit the f---ing ball", over and over until I felt a sense of serenity come over me. On the fifth tee, I borrowed A.'s oversized driver, its head as big as mine. It's impossible to miss the ball with this club unless you are severely vision impaired or legally blind. I was tired, and sweaty, so I took this lazy swing at the ball and hit it straight down the fairway. 180 yards!
Clearly that drive was a fluke, so when I took my second shot, I made the same lazy swing with my five wood, and landed my ball right on the green 15 yards from the pin. I was standing there actually putting for birdie. (birdie, for you lucky non golfers is one under par, and par is what the pros shoot). So for me, putting for birdie is a pretty big deal. For me, putting for double, triple, quadruple bogie is a big deal. (for you fortunate people who don't golf, a bogie is 1 shot over what the pros do, and they never have to count as high as six). When I got up to the green, I was in the unusual position of having my putt actually matter. I looked at my putt from a few different angles. I took a couple of practice swings. When I was in the middle of the backswing of a perfect putt, the pearl gurl behind me yelled, "Come ON!"
Did I mention that I've been in jail on attempted assault charges for three days? A. has been trying to bail me out, but until the surgeons remove my Callaway putter from the pearl gurl's ass, and she is in recovery, bail is denied.
I wonder if it is hell that we are condemned to for our sins of energy gluttony, one of those surreal scenarios where Americans drive to the Country Club in a luxury vehicle with no air conditioning through the fires of Hades? If DC gets any warmer, it will most certainly still be steaming in September when all of the important people get back from the Hamptons and the Outer Banks. It's actually lucky that we live in such a small world after all. On a planet as intimate and as small as ours, we will all eventually end up in the same sweltering boat, stinking to high heaven, facing whatever dismal scenario that may fall in front of us, and try desperately for a solution that should have been implemented a decade ago. I'm as guilty as the next American for the destruction of the planet, so if I'm going to hell, I have only one request.
