SUMMER MELTDOWNS!

SUMMER MELTDOWNS!

Sunscreen, deadlines, bugspray, black outs and sweaty nights. Here Tightrope authors share their memories of meltdowns as we head into the hottest part of 2012.  

Kathryn Mockler

London, Ontario. In 1991, before my husband and I dated, I went to a party at his apartment in London, Ontario. We were in that awkward predating phase. It was very hot, and I was overheated and I guess my sweat stains were visible in my black shirt. When he finally came over to talk to me, he pointed at my shirt and blurted: “You have sweaty pits. 

Tara Michelle Ziniuk

Toronto: July 2010. I was pregnant in the summer of 2010, which you may remember including an insane heat wave. In fact, I was in my third trimester, had started my maternity leave early and was living about a restaurant kitchen in an apartment with almost no air circulation. Giant windows that open an inch are so Toronto to me. People I have very platonic relationships with would insist on taking their shirts off when they came over. I’m smell-sensitive at the best of times and everyone smelled like death to me during that stretch. 

Myna Wallin

Sarasota: March, 2011. I fell asleep to the whirring of an electric fan. By the time I woke up I and tried to say “Good Morning,” I discovered I had complete laryngitis. No sound. The doctor at the walk-in clinic said it was bronchitis. A blazing hot 87 degrees in Florida but I couldn’t stop shivering.

Needing a pen for basic communication; I wondered why I hadn’t learned sign language by now. And who would understand me, anyway? Lost, I retreated to a noiseless inner sanctum, a holy space for words on paper, words on paper. Words where they were meant to be, not floating in the sea air, lost forever.

Samantha Bernstein:

Tarifa, June 2002:  I was traveling with my friend Eshe, and we spent a lovely day on the beach.  At the hostel that evening, I fell asleep and apparently started shaking….  A day of feverish chills and we were off to Grenada, where my fire-engine-red legs ached every time we climbed the long hostel stairs, but the sympathy of a lovely German boy made it less terrible.