By The Floridian staff

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 6, 2000

Summer's secret joys not for the faint of heart Floridians have become a delicate folk, complaining about alligators, rain and honest sweat. "Will summer ever end?" they whine, and I want to box their talcum-powdered ears.

The soul-frying 94-day ordeal known as summer began in the waning hours of June 20 in the eastern United States, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. Its official end is September 22.

Counting from June 21, the first full day of summer, today is the 47th day, the precise midway point of our misery. The world is an Easy Bake Oven and we are half-baked. Thus, with the last of our energy, we offer 94 reasons to hate summer in Florida, one for each horrid, fungal day.

1. Your underwear sticks to you like wet plaster.

2. You reupholster your car seats every day in thigh skin.

3. People you bump into stick to you.

4. It takes more energy than you have to kick out your loser boyfriend/girlfriend.

5. Wearing pantyhose is unthinkable, unless you're robbing a bank.

6. You have to sit indoors to watch baseball.

7. When you sit indoors to watch baseball, it's the Devil Rays you have to watch.

8. The inside of your car gets so hot the floor mats sweat all the coffee you ever spilled.

9. The gulf is as refreshing as a kiddie pool, if you get our meaning.

10. Going to the beach is not noticeably cooler than sitting in your car.

11. You can't exercise outdoors if your intent in exercising is to live longer.

12. Not enough self-righteous joggers keel over.

13. Outdoor dining isn't al fresco, it's al Sterno.

14. Excessive sweating causes social embarrassment.

15. Then you have to go outside.

16. There isn't a single good recipe for cooking on the hood of your car.

17. So-called summer blockbuster movies are rotten.

18. Television, which is lousy year-round, is in reruns.

19. Your kids are at home.

20. Your neighbor's kids are at home.

21. All the neighborhood kids are at your home.

22. Hot beer.

23. Ice cream soup.

24. Your chances of getting hit by lightning are better than the Rays' chances of making the playoffs.

25. Getting hit by lightning still not as hot as sitting in your car.

26. Mayonnaise becomes a biological weapon.

27. The restaurant business is down, but the heat in the kitchen is up.

28. The dog won't go outside. Neither will your kids.

29. Too many people wear too few clothes.

30. Those people are all sitting next to you at the same bad movies.

31. Toupees get slippery.

32. Your power bill equals the Third World debt.

33. There is relief from the heat: It's called a hurricane.

34. You can't afford the air fares.

35. You can't afford the gasoline prices.

36. You can't tell the difference.

37. Family car trips are like Texas cage matches.

38. They sell ice in bags, but what you own once you get to the car is a bag of water.

39. When you ask the 7-Eleven if you can move into its cooler for the summer, they say no.

40. You move in anyway, and the next guy who comes through the door is wearing a stocking.

41. Half the time you forget your umbrella in the car when the five-minute monsoon hits.

42. The other half of the time you forget your umbrella inside the house when the 5-minute monsoon hits.

43. You can't wear black.

44. Going bald seems like a reasonable hairstyle -- even for women.

45. Your clothes mildew -- while you're wearing them.

46. Flying palmetto bugs invade your house when it rains.

47. They gather by the AC vent.

48. Most of the world smells like reclaimed water, and that's putting it nicely.

49. The rest of the world smells like a mix of sour sweat and coconut tanning lotion.

50. You have only a limited number of skin layers to lose at the beach.

51. The roofing business is up, but so's the heat.

52. Walking outdoors with your glasses on makes you feel like Mr. Magoo going through the car wash with the top down.

53. Leave your sunglasses in the car and the frames will sear your temples like steak on a hot grill.

54. It takes a month and a half, maybe two, for clothes to dry on the line.

55. Salt lines from dried sweat make you look like a living chalk outline of a dead body.

56. Melting makeup makes you look like a bird caught in an oil spill.

57. It's impossible to collect the dripping mess back into the makeup bottle.

58. Heat-starved Northern relatives just don't understand why you'd rather drink hemlock than leave your air-conditioned living room.

59. You spend an hour explaining why in the line for Space Mountain and they still don't get it.

60. The whole appalling notion of a "feels like" temperature.

61. Wondering what it "feels like" to strangle the meteorologists who use this phrase only makes you hotter.

62. Rolling blackouts.

63. Replacing the contents of your refrigerator after the rolling blackouts.

64. Hanging out at the air-conditioned shopping mall becomes -- embarrassingly -- quite appealing.

65. Looking at roofers robs you of every reason to hate your own job.

66. Thongs on people who don't believe in mirrors.

67. Palm trees provide decent shade only if you're a starved fashion model.

68. Fahrenheit 451? How about Fahrenheit 1,200! If you're a firefighter, in the summer, the 60-pound uniform (with air tank) never changes, only the size of the fire.

69. Fetching the paper in the morning becomes known as "the Death March."

70. Living this close to the equator means you're always bumping your head on the sun when you stand up.

71. Lobster is not an attractive color.

72. You curse yourself for wasting money on that hot tub.

73. All the cheap vacation spots are even hotter than here.

74. Your friend goes off for a week in the cool Carolina mountains. And tells you about it.

75. Your sweat glands open as soon as your eyes do.

76. Your fingers are branded with the face of George Washington when you pay beach parking with change that has been heated in the blast furnace of your car.

77. There are too many things we can't eat: soup, chili, stew, anything made on a stove.

78. For working parents, the words summer and vacation have no business in the same sentence.

79. You melt faster than your ice cream while bringing in the groceries.

80. It takes an entire tray of ice to cool one can of Diet Coke.

81. You have to mow the lawn every other day. Well, you should mow it every other day.

82. Cars overheat and die on the side of the road, and you just know the dejected guy leaning over the engine works as a roofer.

83. You can't wait to see the sun go down again, but the humidity haze blocks the view.

84. Some guys think mesh muscle shirts are flattering.

85. Many girls think capri pants are flattering.

86. No one looks good in flip-flops.

87. Your formerly perfect coiffure looks like something Ed Wood considered -- and rejected -- for the Bride of Frankenstein.

88. To adhere to health guidelines for sun protection, you'd have to dunk your child in a vat of SPF 30 sunscreen that hardens like that Magic Shell stuff on ice cream cones.

89. Tanning is no longer PC.

90. Anything you leave in your car, including the steering wheel, melts into a fossil fuel.

91. But it's never enough to fill up your gas tank.

92. Longtime Florida residents pretend the heat doesn't bother them.

93. Longtime Florida residents, if they hear you complaining about the heat, drone on about life before air conditioning.

94. The Naval Observatory says summer ends in September, but it's not really over until November.

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