Freezer Burn
by Devon

That summer was hot, and I mean HOT. Not like fry an egg on the sidewalk hot. I mean fry the entire Chicken hot. It was the hottest summer we could remember. Even though we only had 7 or 8 to compare it to, and only 3 of which we could really remember.

Anyways, Kaelin, Bridgett, my sister Tess, and I spent that hot Topanga summer in nothing but our underwear, either in their pool, or our hot un-air conditioned house. A favorite pass time of ours was jumping on the trampoline. However it was so hot that we would grab ice from the freezer and run down to the trampoline before it melted in order for the trampoline to reach a reasonable temperature. But by the time we did all this we were to hot and tired to jump, and instead stuck our own heads in the freezer.

We spent a lot of our summer in the freezer, a lot of our summer. Whether we were getting ice, making juice popsicles or just cooling our heads off. One day while opening the freezer door, a light bulb went on. Not the rinky dinky thermadore fridge light, but the light of a genius idea. We decided that the best way to stay cool was to freeze our underwear.

The plan was simple. We just grabbed clean pairs of underwear, drenched them with water, and stuck them in the freezer. Upon pulling them out we found the flaws. First of all, never ever put under wear in an icebox. The underwear turns to more of a great big ball of ice, then an undergarment, or any garment for that matter. More like silicon for snow people.

Bridgette’s underwear was not covered in ice but it was frozen in such a tight ball that we had to go down to the shed and hammer her underwear before it would open up.

We realized that such a brilliant idea, needed to be more carefully executed. We got new underwear, got it wet, then, to shape them, put them on top of ice cream cartons. This worked perfectly. Even though we had to walk around like we were in diapers, we were finally cool (in both senses of the word). The only problem was that when it melted it was wet, giving the illusion that we peed in our underwear. One day when some people came to our house the four of us were sitting in the garden with our melted wet underwear. Instead of letting these people see her wet teletubie underwear she ripped them off, hid them in the Barbie cue and ran past them butt naked screaming, while the three of us laughed our heads off. The underwear sat in the unused Barbie cue for two years.

Slowly the summer cooled of, and we started to wear pants and shop for pens and pencils. And soon we were all back in school in our dry underwear. All spread into different grades with different classes, with different friends, and eating lunch in different places. But whenever it gets hot I still remember that summer. That summer I had a 72-hour Barbie game and a sleepover every night. That summer I learned how to dive and swim the length of the pool with one breath, and how to wash the dog and the dishes, and make bead animals and lanyards, and grill cheese and frozen pizza and smoothies and of course, the most impressive luxury, frozen underwear.