I like that in the fall evenings and winter anytimes you can bake and afterwards open the oven to let the hot air contribute to the warming of your home. And the rush of heat when you open the oven door can feel wonderful if you keep your distance and you aren’t broiling something full blast so the oven shoots out 550 degree heat and singes your eyebrows.
Baking things is probably my #3 way to cook, behind stovetop cooking and grilling, but when it’s hot or the a/c is on, baking feels like you’re working against yourself in some kind of primitive, unproductive battle of ice and fire, the furnace and the a/c pitted against each other, costing you double the energy, plus the wear and tear on the machines. That’s an activity pretty much strictly reserved for the one percent, and I bet a lot of them are entertaining themselves all the time with it, because a $10,000 furnace really isn’t anything to them but cheap entertainment. But that’s just the way inequality works in America: the rich have all the fun.
Back in high school, I had an idea for a public-access television show that would have put a humidifier up against a dehumidifier (same wattage initially, to be fair) to see which would win. Every week viewers could check-in to see how things were shaping up. I planned to offer color commentary throughout the half-hour or hour program that I imagined they’d slot me for, which probably would have been around 3 a.m. when only the drug addled are still up and watching—but let’s face it, that was my target audience anyway. I had a lot of pretty good ideas back then but didn’t follow through with most, and to be honest, much like my target audience, not much has changed 30 years later in that regard (See: Inventions I’ll never create, businesses I’ll never start, and novels I’ll never write).
I know a lot of people don’t feel this way, but high school was probably the best four years of my life. It’s where I met most of the friends I’m still friends with today. These were invariably strange, maladapted teens who have since semi-evolved into strange, maladapted adults, but they were all creative, talented, unique, and funny, and I felt like I’d found my people. My admiration for them challenged me to become better (because my own self-esteem suggested to me that I was the worst of us and lucky to call them friends). This was at public school, grades 9-12, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Prior to that I’d spent 8 years at Catholic school, which was the closest to hell I’ve ever been.
My recollection of first through eight grade is one of unceasing anxiety. I would cry at school nearly every day, for years. I know you’re thinking, “that’s probably just your memory of it, making it seem worse than it was,” but the fact that I have threadbare memories up until about ninth grade when I refused to go to a Catholic high school confirms to me that I’ve quite appropriately buried that part of my life somewhere deep where my conscious psyche can’t find it, and that’s how you know it’s bad. The important thing now is just to keep stuffing it down if you want to get through life.
Here’s one thing I remember: I was terrified of school, terrified of failure, terrified of people, terrified of new experiences. I had an alarm clock back then that was one of those old style clocks with a metal bell and hammer that went banging back and forth, and I so dreaded waking up each day that if I hear that sound even now, I panic.
Should I have seen a psychologist? Absolutely. Did Catholic schools have that? Absolutely not. That would come later in my life. Back then, Jesus was your therapist. And so you prayed. But everyone knows that Jesus keeps strange hours. Probably he’s busy, still up at 3 a.m., waiting to see how that public-access humidifier battle turns out.
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