Gonna make you sweat

It’s kind of a miracle, I must admit. I’ve been writing this “Damn the Torpedoes” column for 20 years now and it seems like something always pops up at the right moment to spur inspiration for another award-winning examination of our common condition. Fortunately, this week is no different. 

Our area is rife with problems that need a thorough and delicate dissection over 1,000 words or so, but sometimes an issue comes out of left field and nudges its way up to the front of the line in my medulla oblongata, or whatever part of the brain I use to make my fingers push buttons on the keyboard. There are several lobes that might also come into play here, but I’m no brain surgeon, as you’ve probably figured out. 

Anyway … enough brain talk. 

The point is, sometimes a topic lands front and center and just dominates my train of thought, urgently crying out for discussion. And this week, that topic is sweat. Yes, the salty moisture extruded through the tiny holes in our skin known as pores. Hopefully, this isn’t getting too scientific. 

This time of year in our fair city, sweat becomes an almost constant companion, except for the 23.5 hours a day when we’re blasting ourselves with air conditioning and making the overlords at Alabama Power giggle with glee. That un-airconditioned half hour a day is miserable, though. 

Sweat quickly soaks through clothing, dots our foreheads and, in extreme cases, runs like a tiny river into our butt cracks. I’m sure there’s a scientific word for butt crack, but I don’t think it’s in my medulla oblongata, or whichever lobe stores anatomical information. 

If you live here in lower Alabama, you know sweat. It’s just part of life. But surprisingly, there are people keeping track of just how sweaty we are, which seems super weird and gross, not to mention a total waste of any college tuition spent educating these sweat watchers. How do I know they exist? The internet, of course. 

This morning I received an email from a PR hack at the “matchmaking platform” MyDatingAdviser.com informing me Mobile is the 13th sweatiest city in the nation. You’d think some deodorant company would be the one pushing a sweat ranking, not a dating site, but you’d probably be wrong. Apparently, when the cupids at MyDatingAdviser.com aren’t singing “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match!” they’re quite interested in bodily secretions. 

But if you thought the dating folks put this list together to suggest in some way that sweatier people have a harder time finding love, you’d be wrong again. You really need to stop jumping to conclusions. 

No, there’s no overt tie-in whatsoever between the dating world and the sweating world that MyDatingAdviser.com points out. In fact, they almost suggest they’re actually looking for love in all the sweatiest places. 

“For many people around the country, summer means not just heat, but worse — sweat. And since we love the heat, we have compiled a ranking of the sweatiest cities in America by comparing the 200 largest metro areas,” they wrote on their website. 

Wait, they say sweat is worse than heat, but they love the heat so they compiled a list of sweaty cities?? Huh? This is making my lobes hurt. What does this have to do with hooking up? 

Let’s stop looking for reason here and move along to the more important issue — rankings. For argument’s sake, we’ll assume MyDatingAdviser.com has some actual formula for determining overall sweatiness. Actually, they kind of do. Their study compared 200 of the nation’s largest cities, looking at categories like number of days above 90 degrees, population density, air conditioning and bodies of water where you can cool off. Sounds pretty scientific, even if it did leave out the percentage of turtlenecks worn during summer months.

Since we don’t get much national recognition for anything, I was excited to see Mobile as the 13 sweatiest — until I saw Montgomery was ranked seventh! Huntsville was a rather lame 32nd in sweatiness, which made me happy for some reason. You can put a man on the moon, Huntsville, but if you’re not all sweaty when it’s done, can you really call it work? By the way, when’s the last time you actually put a man on the moon? Any idea who the sweatiest astronaut was? I’m getting off track here ….

What this list tells me is that with a little effort, Mobile could easily be right up there in terms of sweatiness and maybe even displace Orlando at the number one spot. I know that’s a long shot given the number of people they have walking around on boiling hot asphalt while wearing Mickey Mouse costumes, but we have to try!

I haven’t had a chance to check in with the mayor’s office to find out where Sandy Stimpson stands on sweatiness, but he’s always talking in superlatives about Mobile being the best-something or most-something by two years ago, so why not aim for being the sweatiest as well?

Sandy doesn’t seem like a particularly sweaty guy, but I know he’s competitive. He needs to launch a “sweatnitiative” if we’re going to break into the top 10, slip past Montgomery and make a run for number one.

The good thing about sweating is there’s no place in it for racial division or socioeconomic stratification. If we’re going to win this thing, we’ll all need to pull together and sweat. Profusely. We’ll actually sweat more profusely if we physically pull together, or all climb inside my car right around noon. I’m happy to drive the entire city around with the windows up and the AC off if it gets us past those posers in Montgomery. 

There are simple things we can all do. Kick the AC up about five degrees at night until you’re thoroughly uncomfortable. Listen to “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C+C Music Factory and dance. If that reference isn’t antiquated enough, break out Richard Simmons’ “Sweatin’ to the Oldies.” (I’ll leave it entirely up to you if you want to dress like Richard Simmons.) 

Or, just go outside. That’ll work. Just make sure you record how many gallons of sweat were collected from your butt crack and let the people at MyDatingAdviser.com know. They’re clearly interested.