Atlanta summers: quenching your thirst all season long

That's right. Atlanta summers suck. There are a lot of reasons why. By "a lot", I mean "two". Heat and humidity. Because guess what.... People were not made to breathe water. Well, unless you count Kevin Costner in Waterworld, who had those gills behind his ears, remember?  It always made me think if you were to chop off his body his head would have looked like a Kevin Costner Shark, because then his gills would have been right where a shark's gills are (I had to double check this fact, because I see more sharkbears [see: below] than sharks, and they're not the same, anatomically) and his hair would be a little brunette tail, and his ears would be his flippers. And yes, I know that "flippers" isn't the right word, but I can't remember what they're called and I know it starts with an f so flippers is close enough. And I don't even know the difference between flippers and the fish version of flippers, and think that the difference is probably just something that people made up so they could be pretentious and condescending to people that don't care about the proper terminology of fish appendages. And I have something that starts with an "f" for those people, and it isn't flippers. Or the word for the fish version of flippers. Anyway, the problem with Kevin Costnershark is that it took basically forever to grow those gills because evolution is pretty much globally recognized as the slowest way to change anything about anything. And I don't have 200 million years to wait for gills like Kevin Costnershark's, so instead I'm just going to bitch about attempting to breathe water anytime I leave the air conditioning, with much _thanks_ to the "can't cut me with a knife" Atlanta humidity.

I find myself gasping in saunas and steam rooms, too, because the heat and moisture suffocates me and I freeze and can only think about the 2 minutes I have left before I either drown standing there, or get enough liquid in my lungs to give me pneumonia and kill me slowly and painfully. And none of this would have happened if I hadn't been so clever and gone into the sauna/steam room in order to avoid the elliptical. Because everyone knows that the more you sweat the better your workout was, so I figured why not skip the workout entirely because I can sweat way more in the steam room or sauna than I can on the elliptical and curse you Mom and Dad for raising me to be so clever. YOU JUST DROWNED YOUR DAUGHTER WITH A STEAM ROOM. YOU CAN'T DO CPR WITH YOUR MIND, DAD (unless you're that brain from the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons... but then you'd be busy being experimented on in a government lab somewhere and have no time for saunas or first aid training anyway).

I'm usually about 6 minutes into my internal monologue and 30 seconds away from dying with the expression of a goldfish on my face before I decide that I'm too young to die and anticlimactically swim walk out of the "What Hell is like Underwater" simulation otherwise known as those hot rooms at the gym. I'm certain that the weather in Atlanta during the summer is what they modeled steam rooms and the Everglades after. I'm also certain that there's really no good excuse for sucking in humid, hot Atlanta air like you ran a marathon while opening your eyes as wide as you can to try to get all the air you can, despite not being able to breath through your eyes (ew, gill eyes). Plus, people don't often understand the I-can't-breathe-water-unless-I-look-like-a-goldfish face, even with brilliantly crafted excuses....

"I'm practicing my goldfish impression so that I can lure my cat down from that tree without calling the fire department."

"You know, the 'plastic bag over my head' expression is what all the models are doing in this month's Vogue."

"My next client has a choking fetish and I'm just getting into character."

With the reactions I get, it would seem that people don't love their cats, read Vogue, enjoy hookers, or are aware of the fact that WE CAN'T BREATHE WATER, which isn't good because it's making up 79% of the Atlanta air at the moment (according to my random estimates current, and accurate, very scientific tests). When those excuses don't immediately come to mind, there is one thing that you can always use as a strange behavior scapegoat: performance art. No one questions art, because that means they clearly don't get it and must practically be neanderthals, so they just stand there and watch or stare with a look of "I totes understand and appreciate the emotion the artist is trying to convey," as they nod and hold their chin with their hand. Honest to god, as soon as you say "I'm in the middle of a street show! You can watch! It's called 'I can't breathe water, oh my god I'm dying and now I'll make this face as I skip-walk to my car and crank the a/c'," they stop looking at you in horror and confusion and start nodding and "getting it".

By the way, writing is a form of art. If you don't get it, you obviously didn't have parents as well-educated and aware as mine. It's true. Though you're probably also still alive because of your dumb parents, so point for you, I suppose.

 P.S. This is a sharkbear. It's art, too. Also, nature's most ultimate killing machine.