Hot

Hot

“How can it be so hot!” Jane said quietly. She was sitting with her six-year-old brother, Jeff, under a tree outside, trying to cool off, but there wasn’t even a faint thought of a breeze.

“This is the hottest day on record.”

“Wow, where did you hear that?” Jane asked.

“Nowhere, I just made it up,” Jeff said.

“You can’t just make up records.”

“What are records anyway?”

“Why did you say that if you didn’t know what it meant?”

“Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it meant until you said that. I hear people say things all the time, it’s how you learn things. I just learned that one wrong. What does it really mean?”

“Well, first, what did you think it meant when you said it?”

“I thought it was just an old saying like ‘It’s hot as blue blazes’ or something.”

“Well that means something too.”

“It does?”

“Yes, when fire is really hot, really, really hot, it turns blue.”

“Oh, huh... so what does ‘on record’ mean?”

“Well, it means on the records they have from when they started keeping track, in other words, writing down, how hot it was. You know when they started making it official so we can look back and see how hot it was ages ago on this day or in some particular month or season.”

“Oh, cool!

“Cool?”

“I guess that’s another expression? Well, anyway, this is still the hottest day on MY record!”

“You got that right. On mine too!