Sally Breslin: My Life: TRYING TO KEEP COOL NEARLY MADE MY HUSBAND LOSE HIS!

Now that the hot, humid season rapidly is approaching, all I can say is I am grateful for central air-conditioning. Not only does it cool off the entire house in minutes, it requires no yearly installation, the way the old window-models used to. I still vividly remember the last time I went shopping for a window air-conditioner for my former house, and it turned out to be anything but a pleasant task.

For a few summers, the window air-conditioner we had back then had been sounding like a helicopter whenever it ran. Oh, it still worked fine, but I kept having visions of it gasping its last breath in the middle of a sweltering heat wave, when every air-conditioner in New England would be sold out.

So late one afternoon, right after I heard the weather forecast for the upcoming week, predicting temperatures hot enough to melt the elastic on my underpants, I decided to go buy a new air-conditioner, just so we would have one handy when the old one finally decided to kick the bucket.

Fearing a protest of “Oh, our current air-conditioner will probably outlive us both,” I didn’t mention anything about it to my husband. I just headed to the nearest discount appliance-store.

The clerk who assisted me was perspiring profusely, which I thought was pretty humorous, considering he was selling air conditioners. In fact, as he spoke to me, I was so busy staring at the big drop of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose, I barely heard what he was saying.

“I want the biggest air conditioner I can get,” I finally told him. “But I don’t want to have to re-wire anything in my house.”

The clerk looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’d say 12,000 BTUs is as high as you should go, then. That’ll take care of about 500 square feet.”

Sounded pretty good to me. Besides that, I’d never liked shopping for anything mechanical so I just wanted to get it over with as rapidly and as painlessly as possible. “Fine! I’ll take one of those,” I said.

“We don’t carry them here,” he said. “Our highest unit is 10,000 BTUs.”

He really made me wonder why he’d even mentioned a 12,000 unit if he didn’t sell them. I mean, if he first had recommended 10,000 BTUs, I wouldn’t have known the difference and he’d have made a quick sale.

I ended up going to several other appliance stores, none of which had the 12,000 BTUs model either – and by then, I had become obsessed with finding one. It was getting late, however, so I was forced to give up my search. I stopped at Walmart for some dog food before heading home.

To my amazement, Walmart had an entire room ( I think it once had been a small arcade) stacked with nothing but boxes upon boxes of fans and air-conditioners...5,000 BTUs, 10,000 BTUs, 12,000 BTUs and even 18,000 BTUs! I felt as if I had just entered air-conditioning heaven.

I was all set to grab the 12,000 unit when I began to think how much frostier the 18,000 one would be. I also began to wonder just how knowledgeable the guy at the other store had been about the size of the air-conditioner I should buy. Wanting to get a second opinion, I headed to the service desk.

The two young women working there couldn’t answer my question, so they paged someone they thought might be able to. He didn’t respond. They paged another guy. He responded, but knew nothing about air-conditioners. They then tried to think of someone they could phone (at home) who could help. They drew a blank.

“Well, I’m not leaving here without an air-conditioner,” I told them. “The only question is whether I should get the 12,000 unit or the 18,000.”

One of the girls then looked toward the checkout lines and spotted a customer – a rugged-looking, husky man she apparently knew. “He can help us!” she cried, rushing over to him.

She said a few words to the man and he immediately walked over and told me that the 18,000-BTUs unit would require re-wiring, but the 12,000 wouldn’t. My decision had been made for me. I thanked him and headed back to the air-conditioner room.

By then, an employee had wandered in. He was a fragile-looking man who complained of having a sore arm.

“Then I don’t suppose you can lift one of these air conditioners into the cart for me?” I was foolish enough to ask him. His expression told me it probably would result in him collecting workmen’s compensation for a permanent disability if he did.

So once again, the aforementioned burly customer came to my rescue. With a grunt, he hoisted the enormous box onto a shopping cart, waited for me to pay and then followed me out to my car, where he squeezed the box into my trunk.

I smiled and hummed all the way home because I was pretty pleased with my purchase. Unfortunately, my husband wasn’t...especially when I told him I wanted to store the air-conditioner out in the shed, and asked him to put it there for me.

“How do you expect me to lift it out of your car?” he asked, his hands on his hips as he frowned into the trunk.

“Well, the big burly guy who helped me didn’t seem to have any trouble with it,” I said.

“Then you should have brought him home with you,” my husband said. “I have a bad back, remember?”

“I’ll help you carry it into the shed,” I offered.

By then, it was nearly 9:30 and pitch dark outside. Our storage shed was located behind our house, bordering our neighbor’s property to the left.

“I’m going to back up the car all the way to the shed,” my husband said, “and then we can just dump the air conditioner in there.”

“But there are stumps and trees all over the place between here and there,” I protested.

“Then get a flashlight and direct me,” he said, obviously not valuing his life.

Fool that I was, I got the flashlight and started to direct him, waving the flashlight as if I were an airport employee on a runway. The trouble was, as he backed up, I stood next to the car and faced the rear of it. So when I yelled, “Left, left!” it actually was his right. He backed right over a dead stump and a small fir tree.

“What kind of directions are you giving me?” he shouted from the car. “The next thing you know, you’ll have me backing right through the shed door! And I think I’m tearing up part of the neighbor’s lawn!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There are no lights on next door – he’s asleep!”

“No I’m not,” came our neighbor’s voice through the darkness. I looked over to see him standing about five feet away from us. “What on earth are you doing out here?” he asked me.

“Trying to kill me!” my husband answered. “If not from directing me into a tree, then from the double hernia I’m going to get from lifting that monster of an air-conditioner she just bought!”

The neighbor (who, I might add, was much older than my husband) wandered over to the back of the car and sized up the situation. “Aw, that’s nothing,” he said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll put it in the shed for you.” With that, he lifted the box out of the trunk and set it down inside the shed. He didn’t even so much as grunt as he did.

We thanked him at least a dozen times before we headed back into the house.

How long did the air-conditioner remain out in the shed? About two years. That was when my mother and I finally decided to carry it into the house and set it up in the kitchen window while my husband was at work.

But that’s a whole other story.

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