The days are getting ever slightly shorter and we’ve reached a point in the year where imagining the cooler months isn’t especially unreasonable. I revel in the knowledge that there are fewer steaming hot days ahead of us than are behind us. Every winter I look forward to it getting warmer because somehow I forget how miserable the heat is.

Of course, we do what we can to mitigate it. We sit in the air conditioning, try to keep hydrated, and when we’re younger we find any body of water we can and drench ourselves.

When I was a boy, my Uncle Mark took us to Point Mallard one summer to beat the heat. We drove over from Tuscumbia with thoughts of wave pools and water slides dancing in our minds.

Once we got there, though, we saw something casting a shadow across the entire place. It was as tall as we imagined the Empire State Building might be. I kept an eye on it most of the day, knowing that at some point Mark would challenge us to jump off of it and refusing the challenge would not be an option. We were becoming men, by George, and boys that think they’re men don’t back down from a dare.

As we had figured, eventually the challenge was made and I found myself climbing the ladder of that high dive like an iron worker building the New York City skyline. I stood at the edge building up the courage to jump. I knew it might hurt if I landed wrong, but I also knew Mark would give me grief for the rest of my life if I backed down; I decided a belly flop was the least of my worries.

It must not have hurt, because the only thing I remember is the fear. And maybe there’s a lesson there. Something FDR said about fear itself. Something about the regret of inaction being worse than the embarrassment of smacking your face on the water at maximum velocity in front of hundreds of people.