My town is riding a tsunami of a heat wave. It’s so hot that my dog, who likes lying on the bed, eating crackers, and watching TV, is returning to her ancient canine instincts and burrowing under the couch, a move that requires a rescue mission when she realizes she’s stuck.

It’s so hot that I happily bought full-price tickets for a really stupid movie just so I could sit in an air-conditioned theater.

This reminds me a bit of the summer after college graduation. My roommate and I moved to a roasting-hot town called Chico assuming we’d be able to immediately find an apartment for two months—no sweat!

Oh, there was sweat. And the only place we found that we could afford was made out of cement blocks, across the alley from a sleazy guy who liked peeking in our windows and was sent to the slammer for assorted other crimes before the 4th of July even hit.

I thought the place was miserable because it had no air conditioning, only a mysterious grate in the ceiling that the landlord called the Swamp Cooler.

Apparently, this is real and legitimate technology, and not something out of a comic book. But to someone who comes from the Pacific Northwest, where cooling systems of any sort are only somewhat more common than Bigfoot sightings, it sounded like a joke. Nonetheless, I sat beneath the swamp cooler and felt its wet exhale on my shoulders and pronounced it good.

Now, it is every bit as hot as it was in Chico—my car thermometer yesterday read 108 degrees, probably a lie, but it felt like that for sure. Only now, I don’t even have a swamp cooler.

I do, however, have a hose, and I’m discovering this simple bit of technology is a mom’s best friend in more ways than one. It cools down the dog, who ordinarily hates a bath, but definitely appreciates a little cold water in her fur.

More important, it entertains and cools down the kids. Lucy and Alice, who are somewhat literal in their naming practices, beg me to play The Hose Game with them. And so I stand on our porch, 30-some steps above the street, while they run back and forth trying (not very hard) to avoid the stream of water. The game involves a lot of squealing and it’s really hard on your toenail polish.

I have to say, it feels really good to shoot at my children, and I think this is the natural result of 1) the length of summer vacation added to 2) the soaring temperature 3) divided by my ever-dwindling measures of patience. Take that, kids!

What I didn’t expect, though, is the educational component of The Hose Game. Alice has figured out that if you angle the nozzle upward, you can shoot a more distant target, like say an older sister cowering behind the garage. She’s a 5-year-old physics genius, clearly.

And then there’s the thing I learned when an elderly gentleman shuffled by with his hat and cane. I put the hose down so he knew I wouldn’t take fire at him and waited for him to pass.
“Don’t I get a squirt?” he asked, grinning.

I gladly obliged, blasting the hassen right back in his pfeffer. (No, I don’t really know what that means, either. But doesn’t it sound like something an old dude would say?)

Dripping with cool water, the old guy kept on walking down the street, with what I swear was a little extra spring in his step.

I guess you never get too old—or too cool—for things like The Hose Game.

--Martha Brockenbrough