After the OASIS speaker finished talking about the OASIS network, a group got on stage and said they would be leading us to different parts of campus to register for classes, depending on which major we had.
"Undeclared, please follow Gina here. Arts and Letters, which includes sociology, psychology, history, please follow Bob. Engineering, including chemistry, math and physics majors, go with Lisa..."
Anyway, you get the idea. Completely forgetting the bottle on the floor, I followed Gina out of the auditorium, across the street, through the lobby of the building (yet again) and across campus for what seemed like a long trek in the pounding summer heat to Cooper Hall, one of the buildings on campus. As we came up to the building, I noticed a Subway Sandwich Shop at the ground floor and Yvette sitting at one of the tables in front of it, waving at me. She fell in beside me, and the group was guided to three student-secretaries sitting at computers in one of the offices. We lined up and they completed the admissions process, explaining how to register in person, where our counselors were, and then registered those who knew what they were taking in the fall. Yvette handed me a slip of paper and told me to give it to the counselor -- it would be my fall schedule.
"But Yvette, I haven't picked out my classes yet. Hell, I don't even know what I am going to major in."
"Yes, I know, but it's time you got an idea. The selection of classes here are widely varied and will give you a peak into a bunch of different discipline, to help you pick a major before the semester is over. Anyway, we can change it once we get home using OASIS via the web. If they register you now, you'll know there isn't a hold on your registration for any reason, like missing shot records. And there's always drop-add week."
Harrrummmpph. I felt like she was being overly controlling. The line moved forward a person. I thought about her explanation, while behind me three freshmen discussed the screaming coming from the women's bathroom during orientation. I pulled the sheet close she had handed me to my face, as if to examine the selections she had made, but I was actually hiding my face in embarrassment. Yvette's ears perked up and the expression on her face showed that she was blatantly eavesdropping upon the conversation.
The processes in my mind shifted through the information I had, and I decided that I might as well go ahead and register now. I stayed hidden behind the paper for a few more moments, still blushing a bit. I then drew out the course schedule and opened that instead, since it was larger and offered me greater protection. The line moved, and I found myself at the front of the line. I handed the student-secretary desk the paper Yve had given me, realizing I hadn't even looked at Yve's choices.
"Student ID number?" asked the girl behind the desk.
I just shook my head, not knowing what mine was.
"Social security number, please? Your soc is your student ID."
I gave it to her. That provided, she typed away at the listings I had given her, and then looked up at me and smiled, then said
"You're all set. Have a great day!"
Yvette steered me back out of the building and back the way the group had come. She asked if I had heard the screams, and I told her truthfully that I had not -- after all, I hadn't realized I was screaming at all, thinking it was just in my head; I had been a bit distracted at that instant, too busy to listen to myself scream...
We walked back across campus in the sweltering summer heat of Florida. I wasn't used to the overwhelming heat and humidity yet, and I started perspiring rather heavily. By the time we got back to the building with the lobby (the one that I had passed through repeatedly all day), Yvette was eying me carefully. I was soaked through with sweat.
"Caroline, you look flushed and over heated. Heat stroke and dehydration are serious issues for newbies to Florida. I noticed you looked that way when you first came over to Cooper Hall, but I was hoping your time in the air conditioning would have changed that."
I just nodded, not willing to say what it was that had actually drained me of my energy and fluids, nor that those same fluids were leaking copiously from my sopping wet pussy.
"Let's stop here at one of the places and grab a drink while you just rest and cool down a little. Say, did you have a full physical before you left home?" Yve asked.
"I went to see the OB/GYN, if that's what you mean," I told her.
"No, I meant a full physical, blood work, the whole nine yards, just as a preventative check-up. I figured your dad would have made you go, Karri."
"He didn't. I think he was preoccupied with the fact that he was loosing his little girl for real for the first time."
We walked up to a self-serve counter and Yvette grabbed a couple large plastic mugs with the school logo on it, then handed me one.
I blurted one of the few things I remembered from the orientation: "Go Bulls."
Yvette smiled at that, then explained, "these mugs are pretty cool -- you buy one for $2.49, and then refills for the whole semester are just 75 cents. I think I have like half-a-dozen of them at home; I keep taking them home and forgetting to bring them back with me. The school changes the logo slightly each semester, so you have to buy a new one to get the same deal."
We filled up the mugs and paid, then wondered out to a table by the window, one that was still in the shade. Yve launched into a lecture: 'The dangers of Florida heat,' and because she's my friend and because I value her opinions, I listened. After all, wasn't she right about the banana and the damsk sheets?
"Karri, although Florida is the beach vacation destination for everyone from the north during the fall, winter and spring, Florida gets really hot in the summer -- so hot, in fact, that only the natives are here and tourism is at its lowest point of the year. Your body sweats to try to cool you down, so you lose fluids really fast outside, especially if you're not accustomed to it."
"Yve, I was in Phoenix, Arizona. The temperature there was 120 degrees the whole time and I did ok."
"Yes, but that is dry heat. In Arizona, your body's sweat evaporates and thus keeps you fairly cool. Here the humidity outside during the summer is usually above ninety-five percent, often at ninety-nine percent or even right at one-hundred percent. That means that the outdoor air around you is so wet that your own sweat doesn't evaporate, and thus doesn't keep your body cool at all, and your internal body temperature rises as a result. Another issue is that all that sweating causes you to lose salt very quickly, which screws with your nervous system and your blood's ability to carry oxygen."
I nodded, taking this all in, and I sipped continuously at my drink. Her lecture was making thirsty all on its own. She continued...
"So, the first rule is: fluids, lots of fluids, and ice-cold ones at that, since taking in a cold drink helps reduce your core temperature. It's not uncommon to see people with drinks in their hand almost all the time around here, especially outdoors. The second rule is to start actively adding salt to your food, an extra pinch on your eggs, fries, et cetera, to offset what you're loosing. The third rule: seek shelter from the sun and heat whenever you start to feel run-down -- almost every building in the state is air conditioned these days, including all the stores, restaurants, cafes, even gas stations and laundry mats. Just find a building that's open for business and go in. And the last rule is to never, ever, EVER jump into a body of cold water when you're already overheated like that, since it can trigger a number of conditions including black-outs, convulsions, cramps, and even a stroke in some people."
She paused for a moment and then continued. "There is another aspect of it all that you have to watch out for too: summer pneumonia. Walking in and out of the air conditioning all day, with the rapid fluxes in body temp. If you're soaked in sweat, the sweat can chill you to the bone in a cold room, and even the air in your lungs can suddenly release its' water content into your lungs on walking into a chilled environment, similar to the condensate droplets running down the outside of your drink."
I glanced down at the cup and realized what she meant.
