Back to work again. Back to gray coffee, buzzing fluorescent lights, the moans of the damned.
Actually today is one of the few days I am happy to be in the office because it has good air conditioning. Sure, sometimes you have to admire bums. Stay out as late as you want, no bills to pay, no responsibilities. Just hang out on the side of the road with a 'will work for food' sign (not that you ever would) until some passing Christian realizes they have not been Christian enough that day and thus fortify their chances of getting into heaven by slipping you a couple of bucks. Then you can buy a bottle of Wild Irish Rose and find a nice bush next to a retention pond and drink yourself to sleep. Sounds like a good life to me.
However, in Florida, two factors turn that pipe dream into a miserable reality. The first is the heat. It's summertime again and the land is once again awash under the sweltering blanket of a tropical haze. I was out in the yard for a little bit yesterday and the sun bore down at me with a white-hot fury as if I had done something to personally insult it. And then there was the humidity, or what I term 'sneaky humidity' because, well, it sneaks up on you. You walk outside and you think to yourself 'Hmm.. not so bad out here'. Then ten minutes passes by and you realize the front of your shirt is sopping wet and your eyes are stinging from sweat droplets rolling into them.
There is a bum I see wandering out Sanford who I have dubbed 'the sweaty bum'. He has long scraggly hair and a scraggly beard. He also always wears a rather heavy denim jacket. He walks up and down the sidewalk in the summer heat looking for god knows what. His beard and his hair are plastered to his face. He is sweating so much he looks like he just walked out of a shower with his clothes on. I have only spotted him from the comfortable confides of my car, however I would imagine the smell would be deplorable. Day after day of crusty sweat dried to your unwashed body. The horrors.
The second factor is bugs. I am not going to get in depth with this because everyone knows how bugs can make you miserable. Once I was downtown and I stopped at the fortress 7-11. To those unfamiliar with these, a fortress 7-11 looks like a normal 7-11 except the entire building is encased in a grid of concrete walls that is partially covered from the elements. If there were ever a communist invasion or a zombie attack, it would actually be highly defendable. Thus I have dubbed it fortress 7-11.
That part of down town is a bum Mecca. I was waiting in line to pay for some gas when I noticed the bum standing in front of me. His arms and legs were entirely covered with open sores. It looked like he had passed out in the dirt right on top of a fire ant mound. He had then proceeded to scratch off the top of every bite. I was horrified and inched away form him, holding my slab of beef jerky protectively in front of me.
I am not sure how I got on to the subject of bums. I was merely going to talk about how hot it was outside. I like to do things like that, loudly state the obvious. I will walk inside from a hot day and loudly say 'Boy is it hot!'. I will then look around pleased because I know no one can disagree with me. It does not always work well, however. If I walk up to a fat lady and loudly say 'Boy, are you fat!' and then look around for agreeable nods, I usually do not see them.
Ok, I lie. I am not actually that sociable. When interacting with other human beings I usually grunt and point. It's just that I am back at work again and I really have nothing exciting to say. The good news is there is only one more day before it's the weekend again.
And I am in a room with air conditioning. Thank you; Lord, for bestowing upon us the gift of A/C.
2026 Update
Dialing the infernal chronometer back to July 2006, where Ed is hiding from Florida's sneaky humidity behind office A/C.
Ah, 2006 — when the office was a fluorescent-lit room with gray coffee and buzzing lights, not a laptop in your kitchen where you attend meetings in pajama pants while the 'smart home' keeps the A/C at meat-locker. The bums you romanticized were analog: cash in a dirty cup, a hand-scrawled sign. Now even the sidewalk philosopher takes cards and Venmo, and the Wild Irish Rose is delivered to the bush by an app with a tip prompt. The fortress 7-11 still stands, but it's now a pickup point for delivery scooters and people filming their Slurpees for content. And that 'sneaky humidity'? We've renamed it climate, and it's no longer sneaky — it just opens the sky and dares you to complain. You grunted and pointed at other humans; today we all do that into our phones, so you were ahead of your time. The A/C prayer still holds, except now the thermostat is a subscription service and the office is a memory.
“2006 Ed, why did you crown that gentleman 'the sweaty bum' from the comfort of your air-conditioned car, and did it ever cross your mind that his denim jacket was probably not a lifestyle choice but the only thing he owned?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you've got me dead to rights. I crowned him from the comfort of my air-conditioned car because that's what I do—I see a spectacle and give it a name like I'm some nature documentarian, except my documentary is about my own drive home. It didn't cross my mind at the time, not really. I was too busy being grateful for the A/C and the beef jerky. But yeah, later, when I got out and the heat hit me like a wall, I thought about that denim jacket. Maybe it's all he's got. Maybe it's armor. Maybe he wears it because nobody will steal it or because he sleeps under bridges and it's better than nothing. I felt like a first-class heel. I still call him that in my head, but now I try to remember he's a person, not a punchline. Not that it helps him any, me feeling bad in my cool car.
