bad metaphor

My mom is from Vietnam. A tropical clime. I suspect that the climate she is most accustomed to affects her behavior and beliefs a great deal. For instance, I had a pet cactus for awhile. When I went to visit my sister for a summer, I placed my mom in charge of looking after it. Upon my return, the cactus was a little puddle of wilted needles and clumpy mud. My mother still denies that she overwatered that cactus.

One area that seems to have been affected by her home country climate is her fear of fans, air-conditioning, and anything that can possibly be used to cool a person down. Probably even iced tea, I’m guessing. Apparently, my uncle had said something that led her to believe that turning up the AC in the car beyond the second notch will make the engine explode, Bruckheimer style. She ignores my standard arguments: that I have had the AC run at higher than “puff of air” level before, that other people have done so as well, and that most auto manufacturers probably wouldn’t allow customers to do something so basic, that would happen to be ridiculously destructive and thus open them up for lawsuits galore. No, it’s her car, and she can do whatever she pleases, so I’ll just crank open the win – nope, can’t do that either. I’ll just sweat until wherever we get we’re going.

The house she’s living in now has window AC units as opposed to central air. Somehow she has gotten the idea that the window units need to all be turned off at night, and not because of saving energy costs either (in the winter, she blasts the heat), but because she’s worried about wear on the units. Well, that’s fair. Sounds reasonable, right?

My brother, by the way, is autistic, and he has set routines and schedules for what to do around the house, like “open all the blinds and let the sunlight in at 7 am,” and “turn off all the AC units, and make sure they stay off!” Also, the windows are painted shut. I have no idea why.

So, I unearth a fan from the closet, and set it up to aim at me when I went to sleep. Ahh, cool AND provides a nice, rhythmic whirring sound to lull me to sleep, buffering against the sounds of traffic and kitchen appliance noise (I sleep in the living room at home). I am in the soft, gentle limbo between wakefulness and the land of drowsy, psychotic dreams about trailer park bears and vampires, when all of a sudden, the whirring stops.

I half-open my eyes to see my mom standing over the bed, with the plug end in her hand: “Don’t sleep with the fan on, it can make you sick!” My queries, consisting of “but, but…what?! Why?” are answered with a half-sensical explanation: she had sat once at her desk, with the fan on, and had felt kind of sick that day, so that means ALL FANS at ANY time will make you sick, especially when sleeping; also, my grandmother and lots of old people say so too: fans are EVIL.

Having vanquished the Dread Fan Monster, she switches the AC back on for me and heads back to her stuffy, dark, breezeless bedroom. Of course, my brother gets up to use the bathroom, and seeing that the AC unit next to my bed is on, helpfully switches it off on his way back to bed.

So I love my family, oddities and all, but I’m very glad to be back in Lawrence. My roommates have AC wars, but it usually manifests itself in one roommate pushing up the temperature dial, and another coming in and pushing it back. Not “you’ll get sick if the dial is at 80!” What am I supposed to say to that?

* It seems I have been posting a lot about AC difficulties lately, of a splendid variety. I guess it’s the summer.

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