Honolulu Lite
’Tis the season to whimper
and sweat like a pigOne day, someone is going to figure out what the true seasons in Hawaii are. Obviously, we don't have the typical four seasons that they do on the mainland. As far as I can figure, we have about 17 seasons in a single year in Hawaii.
Right now we are entering the season I call "whimper." Whimper comes when late, late summer collides with what should be called winter. There is no autumn. There is a very short season called "oughta" somewhere in early October where autumn oughta be. It lasts about 27 hours. It's usually a very still day, the birds stand around in the trees quietly confused, the leaves hang limply, wondering if they should fall to the ground in solidarity with their brethren on the mainland, and a few hardy souls stand on their lanais in double-knit turtleneck sweaters, sipping a hot cinnamon toddy and watching flocks of mosquitoes migrate toward Waipahu. This year, oughta was particularly lovely, though because of El Nino, it only lasted 45 minutes.
Somewhere after oughta there's a season that should be called roachember. The season of roachember also is variable. Its length depends on whether Lanikai Lester, the fabled seasonal cockroach, sees his shadow when he emerges from the bag of Doritos you left open on the counter all night.
We like to refer to "hurricane season" in the islands, but that actually is a span of months made up of several smaller seasons with names like "hey!" "ohmygod" and "whew." Hey! is at the beginning of the hurricane period when meteorologists looking at satellite maps suddenly notice large cloud formations racing toward Hawaii, at which time they yell "Hey! Here comes a big 'un!" They look forward to whew, the season when hurricanes go south on vacation.
But we currently are experiencing the season of whimper, which combines the heat of summer with the rains of winter. The result is humidity of about 99 percent, which causes one to make little whimpering sounds when racing from an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned house. It causes other ones to make large whimpering sounds if neither car nor house is air-conditioned. I am a large whimperer.
YOU KNOW IT'S whimper when you have to dry off before you take a shower in the morning. You actually look forward to the rain so you can be regular old wet instead of sweaty wet.
The heat and humidity of whimper cause interesting things to happen. A slice of bread will turn to mold before you can get it from the package to the toaster.
Granulated salt turns into mysterious, solid, pillar-like objects unknown since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Half-dead house plants, which have not been watered in five months, suddenly spring to life in the moisture-laden air, whistle happy tunes and then drown shortly thereafter.
Whimper is a great time of year to go on a diet because you can lose 40 pounds of sweat alone. Unfortunately, it is followed by the season I call "ugh," during which Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year fall, when you can gain 40 pounds in a single afternoon. Compared to ugh, the season of whimper is a piece of cake. A gray, moldy one.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com