100 Degrees Fahrenheit

I can’t believe how hot it is here in St. Louis. I mean, it’s the end of September and we’re still hitting 89 degrees most afternoons. Not that I have any concept of what 89 degrees even means; I’m Canadian and I was in grade school between 1971 and 1985 when various governments proposed, debated, mandated, and then waffled about the exclusive use of the metric system. By the time they waffled in the 80s and allowed imperial to be used again in conjunction with metric, it was too late. We had learned to drive 100 km/hr on the highway and that it was 30 degrees Celsius on a pleasant summer day.

But, as a child of the waffling days, I still only know my weight in pounds and my height in feet and inches. In Belgium, I had to do what no compromise-seeking Canadian government had ever asked me to do: I had to commit to metric. All of Europe – well, most of the entire world actually – uses metric exclusively. So, for the past three years, my children walked a few hundred metres to school, grew in centimetres, gained weight in kilos, and learned to measure in litres.

Then, we got to Missouri. Now, what the heck is a gallon? I mean, I stand at that gas pump for a long, long time and the machine ticks and dings its way up to 22 bucks, but I only get nine gallons out of the deal. Is that okay? Will nine gallons get me home? It doesn’t sound like very much. I’ve been bragging about my little hybrid car getting over 40 miles to the gallon because that’s what the screen says, but the reality is that I have absolutely no idea what that means.

After filling up (or any other brief errand during which time your car will get hot enough to cook an egg), I get back in my car, where the handy-dandy little thermometer says that it’s 100 degrees. That must be really hot, I say to myself, as I wring out my shirt, wipe the steam off my windshield, and start punching air conditioning and ventilation buttons. But, is it hot? Come to think of it, I’m not really sure.

Recently, while sitting in the full sun at a Cardinals baseball game, I felt sweat dampen my hair, stain my shirt, and run in various places that are difficult to even reach. It had to have been well over 35 degrees Celsius, but I couldn’t confirm that fact with anyone around me. The other day, I was telling a story about working in beautiful northern Canada. It was so cold there in the winter that your cameras would freeze when you stepped off the plane and the pilots would rush to cover the propellers with special socks. It was so cold that you only ever saw children when they would slide down out of backs of their parents’ giant fur coats inside the one-room schoolhouse. It was so cold that this pampered city girl could hardly take a breath. It was – and I slowed down to relate this fact – minus 55 degrees once! My listener stared at me blankly.

It was the same blank stare I got when I told my neighbours that it can sometimes drop below zero on Hallowe’en in Toronto. No wonder they think we live in igloos.