The Surface of the Sun

When I was preparing to move to Las Vegas from Washington State, I kept telling people I was moving to the surface of the sun. It’s hot here. Everyone knows it. I mean, we’re in a desert. A desert filled with CONCRETE, which means it never has a chance of cooling down at night. Mid-summer, when it’s over 110 for a week in a row, the “cool” for the night is 95.

That’s hot.

But it’s part of living in Vegas. And it’s not really THAT BAD. (Don't laugh at me!) Yes, it’s hot. But once you’ve lived through several days at 115 degrees, 104 starts to feel good!

That is… it feels good in June.

And July.

And even August.

But September…

September starts teasing you. The weather reports say things like, "This is our last day of three-digit temperatures!" 4 days later, it's 101. Then the humidity starts to climb. We like 2% humidity here, and it may be 49% on any given day!

People start getting crabby. We stare at the sky and wonder why it's so hot. We yell at meteorologists.

And we start commiserating together.

That's the funny part of it. We've all suffered through the insufferable together, and now we have this bond that brings us all together. It doesn't matter your age, background, beliefs--We are ONE and we shall RAGE against the sun!

OK, it's not that dramatic.

But we are united. 

This never-ending heat starts conversations, it pulls people together in air-conditioned stores, it makes us laugh when someone stumbles into somewhere cool because we were just that person 4 minutes ago. 

And once that conversation about the life-sucking heat ensues, we start talking about other things... new stores to visit, friends we have in common, upcoming festivals.

This terrible, horrible, no-good heat brings us into community like nothing else can. We're forced together, and we connect.

Maybe we DO live on the surface of the sun. That's OK. Turns out there's life here after all.