"Do You Always Sweat Like That?"

That's what the nice lady said to me as I stood in the Delta check-in line at Baltimore Washington International airport last Friday. When she approached me with her "professional" smile, clearly lab-tested to put me and other asocial types like me at ease, and broke the ice by asking where I was traveling to, I immediately assumed she was one of those security people who have to ask you a series of questions about the history of your luggage, but she must have just been some kind of special Delta "holiday greeter" (a well-chosen one at that, genuinely relaxed and charming, I decided after my initial reflexive hostility) since it never got to that. (Come to think of it, nobody ever asked me those questions this trip...) But after a brief rundown of my itinerary and the not-unexpected "Going home?"-"No, I just was home" interchange, she couldn't help asking about the sweat I was in. When I said yes, I do always sweat like that, perhaps muttering something about being dressed more or less appropriately for the weather outside, her smile turned to a grin as she said, "I won't say what I was going to say." We can only guess...

There is, to my mind, something slightly ridiculous, especially in "a professional environment" in which the profession in question is not topless dancing, or, to put it more broadly, in any of those institutions of modern life which does not feature a coat rack or coat check (i.e. shops, airports, post offices, train stations, supermarkets, libraries, shops, etc.) about cranking up the indoor heat to a comfortable 75 degrees when people coming in from the cold are "dressed up like Eskimos," the way PRACTICALLY EVERYONE DOES crank it this time of year, but then, not everybody has the same metabolism as me I guess.