The Heat is On

The iceman cometh…
Here in the "Old Pueblo" we have a tradition which goes back lo those many years and which involves making wagers as to when the "ice will break on the Rillito River." When I first heard about this, I was rather confused - for a couple of different reasons. One was that while the sign next to the Rillito River says, "Rillito River," it doesn't really seem like much of a river, mainly because (except on rare occasions when we get big ol' rainstorms) it doesn't have any water in it. So how can you have a river without water? It's kind of like going to the restaurant and ordering a big ol' juicy hamburger, but then the waiter brings you a bun with no hamburger. Maybe there's a pickle and lettuce and a tomato and an onion slice, but you ordered a hamburger, not a pickle/lettuce/tomato/onion sandwich, right? So you storm out of the restaurant and vow to tell all your friends never to frequent this establishment, and if you're really, really steamed (and of the litigious mindset) you file a lawsuit against the restaurant for extreme mental suffering, which winds up taking over a large portion of your life and leads you down a self-destructive pathway tbat leaves you worse off than you were on that fateful day you walked into the restaurant in the first place. All because of the hamburger-less hamburger. Or the waterless river. And then the second confusing thing is that when I heard the phrase about the "ice breaking" it was May, and when it's May and you're in Tucson, it's generally pretty darned hot, so the only ice that you can find is in your freezer (or in an ice machine at the grocery store). So what was this ice people were talking about? Well, it turns out that they're not really talking about ice at all, and instead are being ironically humorous (as residents of the "Old Pueblo" are known to be) and what the phrase actually is referring to is the first day that the temperature officially goes above 100 degrees. Apparently, that day is today (though I haven't heard the official word yet) and it seems a couple of weeks too early to me, so in honor of the "ice breaking on the Rillito," here is a list of similes to describe exactly how hot it is now that the "ice has broken."

How hot is it?
It's as hot as…

…a sidewalk that's so hot you can fry an egg on it.

…the sun when it's surrounded by about a million other suns that are beating down on the sun with all the power of a million suns.

…a fire that's made out of wood that's been marinating in acid for a really long time (oh wait, that wouldn't work because the acid would eat away the wood, wouldn't it? So let's say it's acid-resistant wood that's been marinating in acid for a really long time).

…a furnace that's filled with that same acid-resistant, acid-marinated wood that's burning like a raging inferno.

…a towering inferno were people are trapped inside and everyone watching the movie is sure they're going to die, and some of them actually do (well, not actually, because it is a movie, after all).

…pepper that's been crushed and grated into little tiny pieces, but then one of the little tiny pieces somehow works its way under your gumline while you're eating so that it burns really bad.

…a piece of metal that's been in a forge for a really long time - but not until it melts - or wait, yeah, it is melted, because that's how hot it is - hot enough to melt metal.

…the hot air that's used to make a hot air balloon rise into the sky, only this hot air is so hot that the hot air balloon just keeps on rising until it leaves the atmosphere and goes into outer space (at which point, it loses its heat and the hot air balloon and everything in it reenter the atmosphere and burn to a crisp because hot air balloons aren't designed with heat shields like space shuttles are).

…the hot seat that you would be sitting on if you were in really bad trouble for doing something that was really bad and then you got caught and somebody had called you into their office and made you sit in the "hot seat."

…the extra hot hot sauce that's green instead of red and that has a warning label that says something like, "Warning, this hot sauce is really hot and may cause extreme discomfort if ingested by anyone who doesn't like really hot hot sauce."

…those little blackish-reddish peppers that come in Szechwan food - you know, the ones that you sometimes accidentally miss and wind up picking up with your chopsticks (if you use chopsticks - I don't because I get too impatient and it takes too long to eat with chopsticks) and putting into your mouth, and when you bite down on it, it feels like your whole mouth is on fire, so you drink a bunch of water, but that doesn't really help, and your face turns red and you start to sweat and it's really, really uncomfortable (though everyone else at your table finds it highly amusing).

…a really hot day in the desert, like when it's May and the temperature has just broken 100 degrees for the first time, and everyone is walking around saying things like, "I guess the ice has broken on the Rillito."

…a black leather car seat when the car has been sitting in the parking lot of the Tucson Mall for a couple of hours in the afternoon on a a really hot day, like the first day of the year when the temperature goes above 100 degrees, and you forget how hot it is because you're still in the "cool-weather mode" so you didn't put up the sun shade, and you're wearing shorts and you hop into the car and sit down without thinking about it.

…a big steaming bowl of five-alarm chili that's been cooking all day - at a high enough heat that it's bubbling, and then you take the bowl and put it in the microwave for a couple of more minutes, and when you pull the bowl out it's so hot that it burns the tips of your fingers, and when you put a spoon into the chili, it's so hot that it melts the metal so you have to tip the bowl out and pour it into your mouth, which is a really bad idea because anything that's hot enough to melt a spoon can't be good for your digestive system.

…a steaming vat of hot water that's been sitting over a roaring fire for so long that all the water has boiled away and all that's left at the bottom is a scorch mark and some mineral deposits.

…the planet Earth after the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches a high enough level to create an extreme greenhouse effect that melts all the polar icecaps and raises the level of the oceans and wipes out all the coastal areas and makes large swaths of land uninhabitable, changing life as we know it forevermore.

…the bottoms of your feet when you go walking down a street on a really hot day when the sun is beating down on the blacktop and heatwaves are creating mirages on the horizon and buzzards are circling overhead and you're starting to hallucinate because you've got a mild case of heatstroke.

…my high school senior picture - which was displayed for my 8th grade class during a student presentation today thanks to my lovely wife who conspired with one of my students to provide secret information about me to that student, who then shared that information (in the form of a poem) with the aforementioned 8th grade class along with the aforementioned photo during her aforementioned presentation.

Okay, I could probably come up with a few more, but you get the idea (if you stuck around through all that mish-mash). So until next time, may your prose be purple, may your knots be tangled, and may your jellybeans come in all your favorite flavors.