Surely, you're joking ...

The girls and I got out of Dodge yesterday to spend a few hours with some friends in Branson at Silver Dollar City. It was undoubtedly the hottest day we've had in the South so far this summer, and by day's end we were exhausted.

The wait for a tram to take us to the parking lot seemed to drag on for an eternity. Although we were at the front of the line, each time an empty tram rolled up to our stop, throngs of the weary masses rushed to fill the seats. Tired 5- and 7-year-old legs just couldn't move as quickly.

A couple of Illinois retirees standing behind us seemed content to take their time waiting and struck up a conversation with us. "Did you all have a nice day?" the woman asked. The absence of the word "y'all" in her question alerted me to the fact that these were not Southerners in our midst, so I asked where they were from. And so began the conversation.

After I commented upon the oppressive heat and humidity and the fact that a heat stroke might be occurring in my near future, the Illinois wife leaned in close and motioned me to do the same. "I have a secret," she said.

A secret?

"Put ice cubes in your bra," she said, completely serious. "You'll melt the first two. The next ones will feel amazing!"

I can think of a number of adjectives for the sensation of ice next to my chest, but I'm not sure that the word amazing would be among them. Exquisitely torturesome. Unbearably unendurable. Violently stabbing. Those would be more fitting descriptors, I should think. (Not to mention exquisitely embarrassing to look like a lactating mother with leaky faucets!)

But what do I really know? I've never tried it. So, in the interest of saving some poor soul(s) from this wretched summer heat, I pass this tip along, proven by a wise grandmotherly type who was kind enough to share it with me. If it saves at least one gal from a heat-related illness, then I will have done my duty to womankind.