Summers are going to last longer and get hotter. The trend is clear, and won't change any time soon.

I spent a summer in Houston in the 80s without using the air conditioner in my apartment. I was lucky enough to have an apartment that allowed me to leave large windows on both ends of the apartment open 24 hours a day, so it was never really much hotter inside than it was outside. Also, I was really skinny then. I have put on about 50 pounds in the last twenty-some years, and I don't shed heat as well as I used to.

But my point is, you are going to want (need?) that air conditioner as you get older and the weather gets hotter. Get one on someone else's nickel while you can, because the need is only going to increase.

Here in upstate New York, we get maybe two weeks out of the year when it's hot enough to seem too warm at night. Those are the nights when I lay on top of the sheets, dozing, while the sounds of frogs and owls come in through the open windows. I do not begrudge these nights, but savor them; they are few enough, and I'll think of them fondly during the six months of winter. I don't want an air conditioner either. I hear enough motors and fans in my daily life as it is.

I live in New Orleans, where the heat and humidity are legendary, and although we have sweet, sweet central air in our apartment, we only turn it on very, very rarely. Sometimes it's just too damn hot to fall asleep...

It's somewhat refreshing for the soul to have it nearly the same temperature outside as inside. You can leave all the doors and windows open and welcome into your home the breeze and noises of outside. And soon enough, your body adapts to living at a hotter, sweatier temperature. It just starts to feel good. For best results, don't wear too many clothes, and wear shoes only when absolutely necessary. I also recommend hammocks placed liberally in every shady spot thoughout your porch/yard. I took a two hour nap this afternoon in my hammock on the porch, and partway through it started to rain that wonderful New Orleans tropical rain.

There'd be fewer wars and less conflict in the world, methinks, if there were more hammocks and fewer air conditioners. When you get TOO hot and sweaty, a double regiment of iced tea and a cold shower, follwed by time in the hammock with a book, ought to brighten your outlook on the world considerably. Remember: no shoes.

I don't beleive you have seriously experienced what it is to be hot. Hot all the time. I grew up in Sacramento, California where the 100+ dry heat would be soaked up by hundreds of miles of pavement and regurgitated back 24 hours a day, growing hotter and hotter without the hope of a breeze to help things along. It was always hotter inside, the water ran warm, even in the shade you were blasted with heat from below.

Weeks would go by, you'd strategically walk from shade tree to shade tree (if you were downtown where trees covered the sidewalk), half naked, a drink in hand everywhere you went. When I was in school we'd sleep away the day and go out at night when it was blissfully only 90 degrees out.

Air conditioning is not a religion, my friend, where I grew up it was an absolutely essential part of life. The worst Summer ever was when we joined the "peak corps." That was where the local utility shuts off your power during the hottest part of the day. The savings was pretty big, but we could not function. Day after day we would sit outside with water pouring over us, knowing the second we had to get up to pee we would be miserable again. Heatstroke, malaise, and lethargy were the virtues of a Summer without air conditioning.

I envy your romantic summers, they must have been sweet, but in a modern world of concrete, global warming, and fleets of internal combustion engines we have little choice but to retreat into climate control. There are many things we can do to fight global warming, and starting by cutting the things that can be readily replaced, driving, water heating, etc., is a good start, but leave me my air conditioned Summers. They were the best years-playing indoors with my friends, watching movies together, swimming outside and running into a blast of cool air through the sliding glass door for lunch. Those were my cherished memories, though I'll not deny you yours.

I completely agree with you about over-reliance on AC. It is almost always overdone, especially in this country. In my sealed building workplace, I freeze. In malls, I freeze. I live in a suburban house and we leave the windows open all summer. We love to feel the breeze coming in, the sound of the wind in the trees. We are shaded by large trees, so it doesn't get that hot. It isn't a matter of nostalgia - its a matter of wanting to feel the air circulating naturally and wanting to hear natural sounds. If necessary, we turn on fans. It feels good to sweat a little and feel the evaporation from the wind. The only problem with having our windows open at night is listening to the inevitable whine of the neighbor's central air, which, typically, is on even when it's 75 degrees. I much prefer the sound of crickets, which, toward the fall, will easily drown it out.

I wouldn't call it nostalgia. I'd call it an exercise in creative writing.

I'm from Memphis and I think you're insane. People die here from heat. You speak as if there's virtue in losing sleep and being unproductive.

Don't worry, you won't fail to notice summer. You can still sit outside and drink iced tea. In my family, it's summer when you start craving cucumber sandwiches. It's summer here when a friend from Germany requests to be taken to Graceland and the weather report says 108 degrees and you open the car door in the middle of nine square miles of parking lot and the heat off the asphalt is like a punch in the face. It's summer when you ask for a cup of ice so you and your friends can take turns dropping ice cubes down each other's shirts on the walk from the air conditioned store to the air conditioned car, and the melted ice just mingles with the sweat soaking your clothes and your deodorant must be pretty damn good because your armpits are the only dry spot on your shirt.

This isn't an all-or-nothing matter, you know. You can have an air conditioner and turn it on only enough to be tolerable. I notice Broudy's worried about his father-in-law's reaction but doesn't mention his wife's opinion. If I were his wife, I'd take the AC and make him sleep on the balcony.