I know it's hot, but how do you "really" feel?

I'm just wondering, once it gets to 97 degrees and 94% humidity, why they have to make it worse by telling you it feels like 110? I don't remember in all my days growing up ever ONCE hearing the words "heat index". For heaven's sake, it's not like you have to tell me it feels hotter, anything over 80 in this kind of humidity not only feels HOT, it REALLY IS HOT! Good Grief, if I can't tell could you please just let me be blissfully ignorant?!

I don't know, I just found it odd (and somewhat irritating) this morning when the weathermen kept saying "Well folks, the high today is going to be 99 but it's going to feel like 109!" Maybe they were just talking to the "old" people so they know not to jog out to get the paper this morning, or the "very young" people so they know not to expect a walk at the park with mommy, or the "infirm" so they know that if they die of heatstroke it will be perfectly understandable. Sorry, it's just that 97 degrees makes me cranky, and with the "heat index" I feel downright evil!

When I was pondering the overused term "heat index" it made me think of all the words and phrases that are so common today that I'd never heard of as a child.

For instance I was oblivious to the title "drama queen" although a sibling who shall remain nameless was most certainly an early prototype.

If I'd ever heard the term couch potato I would have thought it was like a TV dinner (which came in an aluminum tray covered with foil and we only got to eat once a year when "The Wizard of Oz" came on), and the other day I heard mouse potato which, thank the good heavens, has NOTHING to do with food but is just a more tech savvy kind of couch potato.....one referring to spending one's days in front of a computer (blogging?) instead of exercising.

Bird Flu would have been something we made up when the parakeet died suddenly, rather than the newest version of impending doom (back then impending doom was communism and the moral decline of children.....wierd huh?)

I played my summers away on swingsets, skates, bicycles and pogo sticks never dreaming of anything like water parks, wave pools, X-Box, or DVD's.

Big-Box was the coveted packaging from the neighbor's new refrigerator, and mall was something a bear did to you if you weren't careful in the woods.

We didn't have fast food so supersizing hadn't been invented (in food or in people), the closest we came to supersizing was getting seconds if mom thought our "eyes weren't bigger than our belly".




Ringtones, caller-id, and 1411 were unnecessary because the operator could tell you anything you wanted to know. (Added benefit, if you got bored after school and she wasn't busy she'd talk to you ..... if you were really lucky you had a "party-line" you could listen to if you covered the mouthpiece so they couldn't hear you breathing).




Now that you know I'm older that dirt at least you can understand why the heat makes me cranky!

Sure Love Ya!