It's the Humidity

To date, this has been a pleasant summer.  The temperatures have been average for Georgia and there has been sufficient rain to keep our lawns from becoming parched brown wastelands.  Although the sun has shined much of the time, it has not burned us to a crisp.

Nonetheless, this is Georgia and there is a normal downside to this season.  As is commonly said: It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity.  The amount of moisture carried by the southern atmosphere can make human life nearly impossible.

In places like Arizona, where the temperature can soar to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, people do not go outside during midday.  They may brag about their dry heat, but they do not challenge the sun when it is at its apex.

Locally, we too seek ways to keep from becoming unduly uncomfortable.  We drink lots of iced tea, we keep our air conditioners in good repair, and we too spend less time outdoors during the most sweltering hours.

As I have written in previous columns, my wife and I are walkers.  Whenever our jobs and the weather allow, we like to get out and saunter around our neighborhood.  Usually we spend about an hour a day and go for between three and three and a half miles.

My wife insists that this is good for our health and I believe she is right.  Besides, we live in a lovely development.  The homes we pass are well maintained and the gardens carefully tended.  Whatever the season, there are so many flowers we regularly comment on their beauty.

Nonetheless, there is that humidity.  There is no escaping it.  Day after day, our cell phones and our bodies inform us that it is up near one hundred percent.  Moreover, this is not namby-pamby humidity.  It is the kind that drenches your underwear and saps your strength.

So what do we do?  We do what the other steady walkers in our neighborhood do.  We get out early.  During mid-winter, we walk in the afternoon, whereas in summer this would be fatal.  In summer, we head out the door as close to 7:30 AM as we can manage.

Even so, this is an imperfect expedient.  Many a morning the air is as saturated as physics will permit.  The windows in our house are fogged up and when we step outside it is like entering a sauna.

As for me, I walk at a modest pace.  My knees discourage anything more brisk, while my breath cries out that even this might be too much.  But it is my skin that really objects to the impact of excessive humidity.  To put the matter somewhat indelicately: I sweat.

My Yiddish grandmother would have said I schwitz.  But however you say it, beads of moisture well up on my forehead and stream down my face.  My body is also soaking wet, such that taking my wicking shirt off when we get home becomes a chore.  Indeed, everything I touch is sticky.

One of the walkers my wife and I encounter told us about a book he read in which former president Jimmy Carter wrote that he never minded the hot Georgia summers; it was the frigid winters he resented.  For transplanted northerners, such as myself, it is the other way around.

This said, I have no intention of moving back north.  Nor do I have any plans to stop walking.  The humidity and the reaction of my body are merely part of the price we pay for being human.

When I was a boy and assisted my father when he repaired the television sets of our neighbors, I marveled at how much he perspired in the midst of a challenging job.  The more trouble he encountered, the more liquid would drip off his face.

At the time, I found this disconcerting.  But it turns out I am my father’s son and my constitution is not unlike his.  I guess that means I have to accept who I am, as well as the Georgia weather.

But neither am I turning off my air conditioner!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University