"Some Like It Cold"

By Jerry Zezima

When you get to be a certain age — in my case, old — you tend to run hot and cold, which not only is true but also rhymes.

The reason is that no matter what the temperature is inside or outside, it’s either too hot or too cold.

That is why my wife, Sue, called a technician named Joe to come over and fix the upstairs thermostat, which had been making the second floor feel like a sauna.

“Maybe we should start wearing towels,” I told Joe.

“You can do whatever you want after I leave,” he said.

I explained that Sue and I don’t like to be hot and that we prefer the cold weather.

“Except for sleet, which was invented when God had a sinus infection,” I added.

“I’d rather be warm,” said Joe, who works for a heating company that installed our central air-conditioning system over the summer so Sue and I could stay cool.

“Every year, I lugged two huge AC units upstairs to put in the bedroom and office windows,” I said. “But when I turned 70, I didn’t want to sweat the big stuff anymore.”

“You’re 70?” Joe asked.

“Yes,” I answered proudly. “I’m officially a geezer. And when you get to be this age, no temperature feels right. You’re always either too hot or too cold.”

“My parents are in their 70s,” said Joe, who’s 46. “They say the same thing.”

That’s why I have convinced Sue that I don’t have to change my seasonal wardrobe. I leave summer and winter clothes out all year because you never know what the temperature is going to be inside or out.

“There’s no such thing as climate control,” I told Joe. “I found that out when I worked in an office building. It would be freezing in the summer, when the air-conditioning was cranked up, and steaming in the winter, when the heat was on. I felt like bringing a suitcase with a change of clothes.”

“Yes,” Joe acknowledged, “office temperatures can be difficult to regulate.”

“One brutally hot summer day,” I remembered, “I called the National Weather Service to see if my workstation qualified as the coldest spot in the United States.”

“What did they say?” Joe wondered.

“No one answered,” I said. “I guess it’s tough to pick up the phone when you’re wearing mittens.”

Ever since I retired, I haven’t had to deal with such frustrating fluctuations. But now we were having trouble in the house.

“When you get older, you feel the temperature more,” I said. “Yesterday, when it was nice, I went outside. It was too warm in the sun, so I stepped into the shade. It was really chilly.”

“What did you do?” Joe asked.

“I came back inside,” I said. “The downstairs was cold and the upstairs was hot. I’m a man for all seasons. Unfortunately, it’s never the one we’re supposed to be having.”

Sue, who said she couldn’t wait for snow, controls the two thermostats, one upstairs, the other down, because I would press the wrong buttons and turn the house into either a meat locker or a steam bath.

But lately the heat had been going on so high upstairs that Sue and I routinely woke up feeling like we had been camping out in the Amazon.

“Let me see what I can do,” said Joe, who worked for about 20 minutes on the thermostat, which seemed so complicated that it must have been manufactured by NASA.

There are five buttons on the bottom, including Negative (which lowers the temperature) and Positive (which raises it). There are also three settings on the screen: Mode, Menu and Fan, with Permanent Hold, Next and Auto thrown in for good measure.

“Pick a temperature,” Joe told Sue, “and hit Permanent Hold.”

Sue picked 67 (it had been 70) and set it.

“Now,” said Joe, much to Sue’s delight, “it won’t be like a sauna.”

“And we won’t have to wear towels?” I asked.

“Not while I’m here,” he answered.

I smiled and said, “Cool.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima