Dona E. Bowens

Chilllld…you would think that I didn’t live in a 5th floor walk-up for 16 years without air-conditioning. The way I carried on yesterday, you’d think that my days of living sans a/c were 30 decades ago and not (checks notes) last year.

When my central a/c went on the blink yesterday it was like Trump being told, “We’re fresh out of spray tan AND hair spray.” Oh hell no. How do you expect me to live like this? I am NOT an animal, damn it. Walked in the house fully expecting to be hit with a blast of cool air on that 90 degree day only to be met with a punch of humidity. I was confused. Had I accidentally bumped the thermostat causing it to increase the heat in the house to “sweltering?” Nope, thermostat was still set to 72 but the temp in the house was over 80.

The old Barcelona Dona (meaning a year ago), would’ve stripped down to the essentials, thrown open all the windows, turned on every fan I owned, made an ice baby (a 2 liter bottle of water frozen solid) and hugged it all night long and been happy about it. But I’m in ‘Merica now and my neighbors might’ve called the authorities to report a mostly naked Black woman prancing around hugging a 2-liter with all her windows open and her TV at max volume to drown out the sound of the many electric fans. Then the police would’ve shown up and shot me in my own home because, you know, that’s what they do.

No, this is America, I had to throw money at the problem and quickly because I can no longer abide sweaty sleeping. In the end, I spent less than 24 hours in the 19th century without a/c, but it felt like a whole lot longer. Pity me, pity me NOW. I have 1st world problems. Bryan, the HVAC tech, showed up early and took strange delight in informing me that my entire world had been brought to an abrupt, sweaty halt by (drum roll, please)…an earwig.

Yeah, you read that correctly. A fucking bug crawled into my a/c unit, died and his corpse blocked parts of the a/c unit from communicating with each other. Then bada bing, bada boom, Dona spent a night drenching the bed sheets because of a dead insect. So now I’m anti-earwig. They all must die. If a little insect has the power to upset my world to such a degree then the only answer is a War on Earwigs. Who’s with me?