How about a heat wave?
Published on January 19th, 2000
STONEHAM, MA - We have entered real time. It's not summertime. It's not the holiday season. The weather is cold, malls are undecorated and there is absolutely no excuse for avoiding work.
Maybe you have a birthday during this no man's land on the calendar or a trip planned for a spring break, which most colleges celebrate in the dead of winter. But to most of us, the weeks dragging from January through March are like one long, inconsequential Wednesday.
These are rough times. No Red Sox, and football is frighteningly close to its anticlimactic conclusion. I wonder who will win the Bud Bowl this year.
If you do not ski — and I don't — you are in danger of social hibernation. After taking down the Christmas lights, you wave to the neighbors, tell them you'll see them at the Memorial Day barbecue, and spend three months trying to remember whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer is on UPN or the WB.
Some say the colder season is the perfect time to snuggle up with a loved one and read the classics, to go on brisk walks, or to simply enjoy the sparkling splendor of New England winter.
I myself am more of a beach reader, and if you have steam heat, it can be hard to read indoors due to the inability to hear oneself think. As for brisk walks, if I cannot feel my feet, I get nervous.
So what to do? I propose an idea which came to me while traveling in my friend's truck slipping into delirium as the cab temperature approached 90 degrees: a faux heat wave season is the answer!
By mandate of the Board of Selectmen all homes and businesses would be forced to crank up their heat. Tropical drinks would be made available at low prices at all places of business, and employers would be asked to encourage shorts and Hawaiian shirts for work attire.
To fund this effort, the town could simply override Prop 2 1/2 — this shouldn't be too controversial. If we held off on a couple of those schools, maybe we could even heat Spot Pond...just brainstorming now.
In tough times the community must band together and do the right thing. And, really, which scenario would you prefer: crouching over a microwaved cup of hot chocolate trying to forget about your itchy wool sweater and wet feet or downing a pina colada, flip-flops up on the desk, turning to a co-worker to say, "Whew, hot enough for ya?"
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