The popularity of air conditioning baffles me.

I hate it.

I didn't grow up with it, and where I'm from, it was only present in houses on extraordinarily rare occasions that signified wealth or eccentricity.  Some houses had "swamp coolers", evaporative air conditions, that hung from windows, but these were an exception that signified neither.  Our house didn't have either.

Exactly one of my grade school friends had a house with a swamp cooler.  And an uncle did.

Now, it seems they're in every house, and it's not due to global warming.  This has been the case for a while.

Why?

I do really wonder.

I hate it as it makes me freeze.  I freeze all day at work due to the air conditioning, and then I freeze at home due to the air conditioner (swamp cooler).  I freeze in the car if I'm riding with my spouse, who turns the air conditioner on arctic.  The only time I'm not freezing is if I'm driving my pickup and turn it off, or if it's a hot day, and I'm driving my Jeep.

Or I'm outside.

I'll actually go outside on work days just to warm up.

What's going on here.

I'm not sure, but I've developed a theory that it's due to three things, those being 1) psychology, 2) bigness overall, and 3) societal weight gain.

I don't mean to be mean by noting this.

On the first, there are a fair number of people who set the thermostat based on the calendar.  My wife does this.  It's summer, so it must be hot.  At the office, this is the case.  June hits, and the ac goes on. Why?  Well its summer.

My wife will actually wear heavy sweaters in the house with the AC on.  I'll complain and ask that it be turned off, and she'll reply, "I'm hot".  Well, of course she's hot.  She's dressed for Fall or Winter. 

On the second and third, Americans are just flat out bigger than their ancestors were due to diet. Some are taller and overall larger, some are way overweight.  And that bigness contributes to being hot.  

But here's the thing. 

AC actually makes people of a regular body morphology suffer.  

I know that being hot makes people suffer too, but when people complain about the AC, they aren't kidding.  And nobody should be made to dress like they are on a polar expedition in August.

This year, I further know, has been exceptionally hot in many places in the Northern Hemisphere.  But here, it's been extremely cold.  We'll get a few hot days, but just a few.  Most of the time it's been cloudy, cold, and wet.  

And yet, the AC goes on.

Which brings me to my final point.  I understand that if you live in Texas, or some such place, equipping everything with AC makes sense.  But in much of the country, it's just an expensive energy consuming means of separating us from nature.