Today the left side of my face is an angry, purple bruise.

Yesterday, I collapsed face first onto a paved walkway, when my body was overwhelmed with the El Paso heat. I wanted to impress my son that, even at my impressive girth, I can walk two miles with no problem.

Well…I can walk two miles with no problem in South Carolina…or Georgia…or Tennessee. It seems the idea that the western heat isn’t so bad because it’s a dry heat is a fantasy concocted by someone who wants to sit back an laugh at all the southeastern tourists who think they know how to live in the 90-100 degree range.

You see, there’s a reason why chicken left too long in the oven dries out, while chicken in chicken soup gets moister the longer it cooks. When heat has no moisture of its own, it sucks out all of yours–thus my resulting heat exhaustion after 40 minutes.

What does heat exhaustion feel like? I’d tell you to tie yourself lying down to the bed or sofa, but being tied still allows you a smidgeon of movement in your feet and hands. When I say exhaustion, I mean I couldn’t move at all, like someone had clamped the nerves from the base of my skull to the rest of my body or maybe forced me down with a Vulcan nerve pinch. I literally dragged myself–and I mean, I was so weak that even dragging myself, I fell on my face again because I couldn’t support myself on my knees–until I managed to get to shade under a bridge. After that exertion, I couldn’t move at all, not even roll to where I had abandoned my phone–or rather where it had abandoned me, betrayer!–and I had to lie there on my back, wondering if this was where I was going to meet my end.

You see, the residents of El Paso know better than to go out in the heat of midday, so I hadn’t seen a soul for half an hour. And under the bridge I was out of sight of the cars rushing by over my head.

Finally I was rescued by an angel on a bicycle, who retrieved my phone and called 911 when I couldn’t even do that. After that, I think I sort of faded out, because I have the flash memories of faces, paramedics and my blessed daughter-in-law.

Five hours in the emergency room, and it was determined that I had numerous abrasions, particularly on my face, but nothing was broken, and I had not suffered a concussion. I was merely a lunatic, overweight, 65-year-old woman, who thought she knew what heat was.

Obviously not.