Aug 5, 2022 4 min read

Tucked inside this 600-word story of flop sweat is a lesson in adulting, which will become evident shortly.

So I was driving to spend a few days with friends in Connecticut this week, and just as I ramped onto the turnpike, the cold air coming from the air conditioning vent started to feel less cold. Soon, the air went from freezer steam to jacuzzi mist. By central Pennsylvania, my car was blowing on me like a hair dryer.

I thought about pulling over to have a look under the hood, but why? Would I even be able to locate the air conditioner?

And so I soldiered on. I would travel windows-down. Back in the day when we drove junky cars, we used to call that “460 AC,” short for “four windows down and 60 miles per hour.” It had been forever since I’d done that, and it felt freeing; I was driving through a wind tunnel, the breeze whipping my hair around like a model in a shampoo commercial.

I did the dolphin thing out the window, riding the waves with my left hand. The feeling took me back to my childhood, when my dad was a serial station-wagon purchaser. The big, yellow one was particularly memorable because it had a rear-facing seat in the way-back that allowed us kids to wave at the cars behind us.

That big, yellow boat had no AC, and we always drove windows-down in the summer. I don’t remember much travel conversation from those years, and now I know why. We didn’t talk in the car because we couldn’t hear each other over the wind.

As I zipped along the turnpike, I wondered why my AC had failed, and what it would cost to get it running cold again. I decided it would be $900. Seems everything that goes wrong these days will cost me $900 – dishwasher repair, landscaping, tank of gas, heartbreak. You know, the usual.

Anyway, my hair’s whipping around and I’m getting honked at by passing truckers, and I’m liking it. Maybe I won’t get the AC fixed.

And then the phone rang. My boss was calling to hook me into a production meeting I didn’t want to miss. I would have to close the windows.

Up went the windows and up went the temperature. The thermometer read 94 degrees outside. By the time the meeting got underway, it was probably 104 inside. I was a chicken nugget in an air fryer.

As I drove, I listened and sweated. Miles passed and the meeting went on; as it got warmer in the car than outside, the windows fogged. I tried to breathe half as often.

The meeting lasted an hour, long enough for the steering wheel to be splashed with sweat from my hands. My hair was plastered to my head and my jeans had grown four sizes. Mascara? On my chin. How did our parents survive in station wagons with multiple, squabbling children on hot days when parked at lights or stuck in traffic? How did they not flee?

I arrived in Connecticut looking like I’d staggered, sodden, off that raft in “Titanic”, which is really disappointing because I wanted to look cute. My friends helped me find an oil-change place nearby to have the AC fixed. It just needed new freon.

The young man who did the work looked at my account and said that the last four times I was in for an oil change, they’d suggested that I get maintenance on the AC and filter, and I waved them off.

“You should keep up with this,” he said. Scolded by a teenager.

But he was right. Fifteen minutes and $239 later I drove away, chastened but chill.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.