The Rise of Humidio


After sitting on the metro platform for ten minutes to soak in the cool winds, I finally brave the train. It’s enclosed and stuffy, there is not one window on this metro. I sweat preemptively while even thinking about the crowd and the closeness. I shudder, it’s going to be miserable. But I have to go to work.

If there’s a bright side, it’s that I’m right. I am miserable. I literally grumble the entire eight minute journey. While I am not directly addressing anyone or speaking loud enough to be understood, I do a series of low mumbles and irritated heavy breathing. I must come off like a drunk crazy homeless guy who can’t help wondering why God has chosen him to lead the armada against the turtle people. I look around the metro: I hate everyone and everything on it.

Let’s just be clear, I am not proud of this. While I am a relatively normal and pleasant person, the humidity has a way of bringing out a rage in me that is frankly super villain worthy. I hate everything when the clouds above el Praha close in the heat and make life unpleasantly and inescapably wet. Everything. The cat is an asshole, the little kid crying should be shipped to Iceland. Dog forbid someone hold me up at the grocery store – which in the Czech Republic happens every time you walk into one. I am a lunatic, only it’s not the moon which transforms me into a monster.

In the U.S. it’s slightly better. Only because each covered domicile or building or room or hut is blasted with the comforting arctic temperatures of air conditioning. If you’re overheated you can go to the mall or a bookstore or anyplace. But not in Prague. This induces my rage all the more.

Long ago I swore off elevators, so by the time I get to my office on the seventh floor I am a vat of my own glandular juices. My colleagues have rigged open the windows using a rubber door stop, a rack of paper, and the back of a desk chair. Since we are high enough up that our offices become a deranged wind tunnel, we can’t simply open a window and leave it open. The mood otherwise is reminiscent of the hospital in Bridge on the River Kwai. Sweating and imploring the weather gods. There is no respite. We do not talk, but plot alone. I pity the student who comes to this office today.

It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that your mood and sociopathic tendencies are so fickle as to be swayed by the weather. But they are and I am. I can fully commiserate with my villainous brethren. Lex. Joker. Poison Ivy. Loki. I get it. Green Goblin. Doctor Octopus. I get it. All it takes is one little push and a relatively normal dude becomes a super villain. My costume would be a light robe or a constantly air conditioned space suit. But then I’d be reasonable and calm. I need to think this through more. My super villain name would be Humidio or Humidon or something like that. But really, one little push.

That push almost comes when the woman in front of me at the shop can’t understand the laws of retail and consumerism – namely, you take goods from a shop and you give the shop people money in return. Baffling! Fortunately I get out of there before Humidio can be unleashed. Plus I had ice cream to cool me down outside.

I get home and strip off every piece of clothing that isn’t boxers. I open all the windows and sit on the bouch. I aim a fan at me. The cat decides that now is a good time to rub her entire completely shedding fur body against me. I lightly push her away, but she comes back. I have no ice cream. I foresee the rise of Humidio.

 

 

 

Comments are closed.