HEAT, HATE

In school once, when I was a child, the teacher asked that we write a two-standard-notebook-size-page essay on anything that we liked. This assignment was given to us, not out of tutorial compulsions, but because the teacher was moonlighting after our early-morning charity school hours, and therefore wanted to take a nap. I won the contest, the remarkable thing about it being, I did not write my work in two pages. It was as follows:

HEAT, HATE

I hate to hate, but heat makes me hate. Therefore I hate heat, even though, I repeat, I hate to hate.

Is it, one can wonder, a coincidence that both words, HATE and HEAT, are made up of the same letters? Are they Spoonered relatives?

Well, the point I am trying to make is, I still hate to hate, but heat makes me hate, and therefore I hate heat, and there is just no end to it anywhere in this country, air conditioning notwithstanding, except in the hills. And I do not like to hate. So I am doubly heated.

My parents always told me that I had a higher temperature than was normal. Having had me examined by doctors, experts and charlatans, they contended with pride that I was a very warm person. That has caused another problem: I am a great target for mosquitoes. People who know me claim that I am a mosquito magnet. If there were one mosquito on the North Pole, frozen or in torpor, it would have to wake up and target me.

See my picture below, and find out whether it is effective or not.