Escaping the Heat, and Learning Something

Batteries for fans are a popular item for people seeking relief from the late June heat, and I happen to be at the CVS cash register buying bottled water when a woman in a pantsuit walks in and addresses the friendly cashier in a voice tired from being outside in the sunshine.

“If I were batteries, where would I be?” she asks, putting her hands on her sweaty back, and the woman behind the cash register, Elsie, leans over the counter and says “Right here,” and points to the battery display not six inches from where the woman in the pantsuit is standing.

I laugh as much at the phrasing of the question as at the answer. Elsie and the woman grin back wholeheartedly, and then the woman continues her shopping.

“You know, it’s so funny to me,” Elsie says. “People come in here all the time lately and ask me where the batteries are, and they’re always standing right in front of them when they ask me.”

The heavy heat was driving even more people than usual into the drugstore that day…in fact, into any store, I knew from personal experience, given the number of places I’d already been that day. There would also be more people at the library.

The first library I went to was closed. The second one was packed – with even more cars than in the drugstore parking lot. People were reading magazines and busy checking out movie titles and using the library computers. Some people, I guessed, were probably there for the air-conditioning and a cool place away from the sticky heat of home. But many people who went to the library not really looking for anything -- besides escape -- often left with something more specific and valuable.

“Oh my god! I’ve been wanting to read this since I was a kid! I forgot!” I heard one teenager exclaim as she yanked a book off the shelf next to the empty table with the sign on it that said “Teen Center, For Teens! And Teens Only!”

Needing to escape the heat of my own house that day -- after typing some things up on my laptop at the one free library table left, by then -- I get into my air-conditioned car and drive over to the shady part of the lake, where I know there will be a breeze and a bench where – with binder in hand -- I think, if it’s not too hot, I can work on some things. I park and walk past the barriers to the restrooms and then make the shady walk back. By the time I get back to the bench my head is already swimming with words and phrases which arrive fully formed even more quickly than I can write them down. Oh my god, I think, this hasn’t happened to me in so long! All right!

Sometimes something has to be sitting right in front of you before you can find it. And the lake, I remembered -- now that it was sitting right in front of me -- never ceases to amaze and inspire me.