You know that story you told your kids about hiking three miles to school, barefoot in the snow, uphill all the way? Well, while your kids were groaning over yet another one of your tall tales, I was driving my kids past the brick buildings that made up Tillinghurst Elementary or Columbus High and telling them about how when I was little schools didn't have air conditioning.

"You've got to be kidding," my son said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"I'm serious as a heart attack."

"How could you stand it?" daughter Ashley exclaimed. "It's so HOT in Georgia!"

"We never gave it much thought," I replied. "Shoot, we didn't even have central air in our home till I was a sophmore in high school."

"OHMYGOSH!" Konnie yelped. "I would DIE! Heat gives me migraines."

"I'm glad I grew up in Oregon," Shelby said, chiming in.

From that moment on, my four kids considered me with gap-mouthed regard. They told all their friends about my grueling childhood. Their mother was the Goddess of Cool. She'd survived 12 years trapped inside the bubbling belly of a Southern schoolhouse, an inferno so fierce breezes had to be bused in, against their will.

Of course, in the pre-industrial age when I was growing up, school didn't start till after Labor Day. A good thing, too, since the dress code didn't make allowances for the weather. The same rules applied regardless of the temperature. No shorts. No shoes. No admittance. Skirts could only be three inches above the knees and pants weren't an option for women.

I'm not exactly sure why, except I think in the Bible belt it had something to do with zipper fronts. Boys were expected to have flys, but it was considered unseemly for us girls to have breeches with a front fly.

You don't suppose having a front zipper predisposed a gal to growing a penis, do you? Now that really would have been something worse than Georgia heat to contend with as a child.

I don't know when God gave the word, but the school board decided in the early 1970s that it would be okay for us girls to wear "pants suits" to school. No shorts, or fly fronts, mind you, but I still remember where I was when I heard the news. I was standing outside the cafeteria, talking with Buddy Wilkes, my girlfriend's brother, waiting for the bell to ring, so I could escape the heat of that ring of fire beating down a top my head.

If I'd understood then how much respect my suffering would earn me, I might have taken more pleasure in the trickles of sweat running up underneath my arms and dripping off my elbows.

But in those days, all I wanted to do was get home and stand in front of the window air conditioner, where I would pray diligently for an overdose of freon.

As you might suspect, being the goddess of cool requires a certain amount of pious devotion.