Stop me if you've heard this one.Hot enough for ya?
Almost anyone and everyone who might be inclined to be reading what I'm writing here has already experienced some of the hottest weather in recent years.
And sparing you the tempting "Al Gore dun been warnin' us" schpiel, suffice to say that we have already come through a chunk of a pretty hot damn summer.
And it's just now the first week of July.
Can't wait for August.
Having lived most of my life in the South, though, I, like many of you, am fully aware of one's of life's most set in stone maxims.
It ain't the heat, it's the humidity.
Anyone who lives or has lived in a tropical climate knows the drill.
A 95 degree day, with a moderate percentage of humidity, is a warm, but arguably delightful, summer day.
An 85 degree day, on the other hand, can deplete not only one's energy, but their will to go on living, should the humidity be up there in the " man, are you kiddin' me with this muggy thing?" range.
And I've never once, honest efforts notwithstanding, been able to find anything redeeming about high humidity.
It is simply one of life's little inevitable miseries.
Like mosquitos, the stench of garbage and any TV show whose title starts out "The Real Housewives..."
Here's an interesting fact, though, that I have stumbled across after years of witnessing and/or experiencing the cause and effect of high humidity.
It makes people stupid.
Allow me to elucidate.
So many times, over so many years, I have witnessed seemingly intelligent people, people who are blessed not only with a far above average intelligence and endless supply of common sense but also a near pristine social and moral conscience morph almost over night into stammering, stuttering, confused and confusing candidates for the not so coveted position of village idiot.
For example, an individual sees a simple problem that requires a simple solution. They study and research possible solutions and find there are several available. They put themselves into a position to be able to implement those solutions and begin what, by any reasonable definition, is a generic and basic process of applying the simplest available solution to said problem.
When suddenly, as quickly as the process begins, it begins to unravel in direct proportion to the rise in the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor in a parcel of air to the saturated vapor pressure of water vapor at a prescribed temperature.
Or as we non-Weather Channel geeks say, "damn, it's muggy out here, aint it?"
From there the process of problem solving rapidly deteriorates as the problem solver not only becomes incapable of simple implementation, but compounds the problem by allowing themselves to be drawn into useless and counter productive debate with fellow problem solvers who are both distracted by detractors opposing the original solution for reasons both selfish and self serving as well as finding themselves drawn, as if unable to resist, into the black hole-ish definition of insanity...doing the same futile thing over and over and over again and expecting a different end result each time.
The sad, said end result is, inevitably, in fact, the same each time.
The problem goes unsolved.
The solution remains unapplied.
And seemingly intelligent people who were blessed with a far above average intelligence and endless supply of common sense, not to mention a near pristine social and moral conscience morph into stammering, stuttering confused, and confusing, candidates for the not so coveted position of village idiot.
To wit; high humidity makes people stupid.
While admittedly, to my knowledge, there is no scholarly, let alone empirical, data to support this theory, I would offer that unimpeachable evidence exists and said evidence validates one of the most accurate of metaphoric axioms.
"Proof's in the puddin".
Because, as it turns out, the highest number of recorded instances of common sense solutions to simple problems evaporating as if they had never existed has been documented, time and again, as occuring in a place almost continuously subjected to high humidity.
Washington, D.C.
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