Ninety Eight Point Six

 So, most people, or your average person, has a body temperature of 98.6. Not I. My mother had the same body temp, so I guess I inherited a low body temperature. It’s 97 on average and only goes up if we’re burning up with a fever or falling through the ice of a pond.

Oddly, our father and I also have the same oddity of sleeping hot. I live in Vermont. I sleep at 60 degrees Fahrenheit year round WITH A FAN, and even then, my partner complains that I’m a blast furnace, that I radiate the heat of the sun. My duvet is only for show. I can only STAND having a cotton sheet or two on my body. NO FLANNEL PJS FOR ME. Shorts and sleeveless T. Or nothing at all on really hot nights when my A/C is unable to keep up with my body throwing heat out into my bedroom like the Brunson burner that I am.

How in the WORLD could I have the daily body temp of a pond frog and the nightly body temp of a Jersey cow? And warm hands year ‘round! I read palms for fun during the Halloween season (and often in the winds, under a tent near Lake Champlain) and every single person wonders why my hands are so warm!

What am I? A polar bear/rhino mix?  A caterpillar mixed with a lizard? Or am I simply half Sidney, half Dorothy? Have I actually been given the best of my dad— the ability to stay warm anywhere- and the best of my mother, an ability to stay alive even when I am literally freezing to death?

Maybe ninety eight point six is NOT a gift: it is merely a suggestion. Maybe 98.6 is the equivalent of traffic lights in Italy, Like speed limits in Boston? Just maybe…