Summer in Oklahoma can be described with one word: hot. Of course, there are many adjectives and phrases you can use to help modify and support it. A few that come to mind are “sweltering,” “awfully” and “Why exactly do I live here?”
Since Oklahoma is such a hot place, I’ve come up with a list of summertime activities to help beat the heat and get your mind off the temperature gauge.
Try noodling. Maybe this was a bad idea. I think I’d rather dive off the Catoosa bridge than stick my arm deep inside a murky hole on a riverbank in hopes that a mean giant catfish will bite it off.
Hook up the hose to an old Wham-O! Fun Fountain and try not to let the clown hat hit the ground. Remember this toy? It was a water fountain that looked like the head of circus clown. You’d connect your hose to the clown, put a silly cone-shaped hat on it and then turn on the faucet. When you did that, a 10-foot tall stream of water would shoot out from the top of the clown, and the hat would dance beautifully atop the stream like it was floating on air.
Yeah, I don’t remember that either. That’s because it never worked. The hat would only stay in the air for a few seconds before it fell and hit some neighbor kid on the head. After the neighbor kid ran off crying, you and your friends would then take turns jumping over a giant clown head that shoots out a stream of high pressure water. Nothing weird about that, right?
Go to Big Splash or White Water by yourself and try not to look too creepy. To make this one even more challenging, drive a white van with tinted windows and call yourself Mr. Charlie. Or maybe bring along the clown head fountain thing and ask for a water hose.
Serve as an indentured servant for someone at Grand Lake. I can’t afford a house at Grand Lake, so I thought about entering the community’s Indentured Servant Program. It’s pretty cool. You work as a maid or butler for some rich family on Monkey Island and after seven years, they give you a canoe…with a dock. The dock is totally worth it.
Listen to Sports Talk Radio. On the International List of Boring Things to Do, listening to Oklahoma sports talk radio in the summer ranks right between watching the old lady across the street check her mail and listening to audio cassettes of Charles Ely reciting slam poetry. There’s literally nothing going on sports-wise in Oklahoma during the summer, and the sports conversation is either about some University of Oklahoma practice report or how the Cardinals are going to choke away the National League Central.
So why would you do this during the summer doldrums? It will put you to sleep. And when it’s 105 degrees outside and kids are making western omelets on the sidewalk, that’s not a bad thing.
Find out how Patrick is faring in this heat wave at www.thelostogle.com
