California Dreaming

♪♫♫ Of going far away... ♪♪♫

Let's face it, California is hot. On a good day, you can fry an egg on a sidewalk. On a bad day, you open your door, step outside, and spontaneously combust. It's not a place where you really want to spend time outside during the summer months. I mean, unless you're a neighbor we had, who enjoyed sitting on her deck when it was a thousand degrees outside.

Anyway, here's some stories of how lovely summer is in California, and how it never makes you fantasize about moving to some cool, rainy spot in the British Isles. Really.

 

 

 

A Faint Memory

 

Back when I was in elementary school, we once went on a field trip somewhere. It was a hot day, and we were all standing outside, listening to one of the adults talking about something.

At some point, there was a bit of a commotion in the crowd. One of the boys in the group had passed out, apparently from the blazing heat. 

 

 

How to Burn Alive

When we moved to a rural area, there was a lot of dead grass and weeds on our new property. Since it was summer, having that much dry vegetation could constitute a fire hazard, so my parents had to trim it. It was exceptionally hot that summer, with temperatures well over 100 degrees. (Or over 40 for you Celsius users.)

I was a small child who didn't want to be in the house alone, so my parents took turns going out with the weed whacker. Mom would be out there for a short while, then come in from the hellscape of outside. My dad would then be baked alive for a bit while he removed a bit more of the dead grass, and then he'd go back into the house, half-dead himself.

 

Sunscreen? That's a Gray Area

 

Once upon a time, I was a stupid teenager who went on a field trip. Being a stupid teen, I never bothered to put sunblock on. The result was a spectacular sunburn on my arms, the tops of my feet, the back of my neck... The one on my neck was the worst. Perhaps in part because I usually have my hair down, and that day it was in a ponytail. That poor skin didn't know what to do with the sudden onslaught of sun, a near-foreign concept to it.

As an added bonus, when my sunburn finally began peeling, the back of my neck had a lot more dead skin compared to the other sunburned areas. Also, the skin that flaked off was gray rather than the typical white. I'm afraid to know what level of sunburn that constitutes as. I didn't even know it could be gray.

 

School's Out Forever

 

My first day of senior year was rather interesting. Got there that morning, and just kind of wandered around outside. I was going to a new high school that year, so I looked around the campus while waiting for school to start. A couple more kids appeared, but I didn't see many people. What time is it? Shouldn't school be starting soon?

As it turned out, school had been cancelled on account of a large wildfire in the area, and a few people didn't get notified. So the few kids who came ended up going home again.

 

 

 

Escape to Cleaner Air

 

Speaking of wildfires, that one was huge and went on forever. There was smoke in the air for ages, and I grew tired of the smell of burning wood. Fireplaces often smelled unpleasant to me for a long time afterwards.

My brother got tired of it, too. One day, he called a place he sometimes stayed at, and asked, "Do you guys have smoke up there?"

"No," they replied.

"I'm coming up there."

And he did. He was so sick of smelling the wildfire that he took a mini-vacation just to get away from it.