The H is O

A couple days ago, it was roughly 80 degrees as I came to work. I don't generally venture outside the entire work day, so once 4 came around and I exited the building, I expected what we've been having for weeks now -- heat, humidity. I came out, and it was cool and dry. I needed a sweater. I didn't have one. So I cranked up the heat in the car on my drive back home. I love that first moment when you need to put the heat on in the car, probably because the smell reminds me of my childhood and my college days. It's a smell I used to describe as "burning dust," but I'm really not sure that's accurate. It reminds me of coming back to my dorm in November, shivering because I was a dumbass about wearing really thin coats in those days, and turning the dial on the rattly heater under the window in the Toaster (my dorm). Then, as the room warmed up and my nostrils were pleasantly assaulted with the smell of "burning dust," I would turn my computer on and, oh I dunno, play Escape Velocity. Things haven't changed too much. But my love of that smell goes a bit farther back, to when I would come home from middle school and immediately head for our kitchen and a certain kitchen cabinet. At first glance it looked like an extra pot cabinet, directly under the cabinet where we kept our plates and glasses and on the floor next to the door leading out to the porch. But I knew that within that cabinet lay a delightful row of heating... things. I don't even know what they were, but they looked like thin sheets of metal, all standing on their ends and close together like the teeth of a comb. I'd open up the doors of the cabinet, set a chair in front, and rest my stocking feet directly on the metal while the whole house made that delightful click-click-click sound. The heat's not on in our apartment building yet, and we don't generally need it yet, but I'm wondering if the same sounds we heard last winter will come back again. The place has generally quieted down -- no more constant sound of running water in the walls, for instance -- and I remember the boiler was fixed/replaced in the early spring, so it's possible we won't hear the same bangs and hisses. Last winter those sounds were a little frightening, but probably because we were sleeping on a futon in the living room, and there was nothing on the walls, and boxes were still pushed into a corner, still packed. Now that it's truly home, I'm hoping the sounds come back.