0º
I’m a naturally curious person but there are some things in life I don’t feel it’s entirely necessary to know. The conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius is one of those things.
I think there was a time in my life when I did know it — about five years ago, during my first extended period of time spent in the US — but I hardly needed it, so we lost touch.
In place of a real conversion, I tend to just subtract 20 degrees from the Fahrenheit temperature to arrive at its Celsius counterpart. A broken clock is right twice a day! Thanks to this equation, I would think that 0º weather is weather you need long johns for, but not weather that would completely prevent you from leaving the house.
After writing this, I looked it up and 0º Fahrenheit is about -18º Celsius so my calculation actually holds up pretty well in this specific scenario.
50º
This is the best possible day I could imagine. We’re at the beach. We brought a cooler and grabbed ice cream at a little shack before finding our spot on the sand. I’m getting a tan. I’m beginning to feel the sweat pool around my body.
350º
Now this one I understand. I’m guessing that somewhere between 80º and 350º I melted into a ball of dough.
100º
It seems impossible that the human body is capable of withstanding this temperature. With my personal conversion rate, this is 80º Celsius — totally unimaginable.
It was with this mindset that I stood outside in Palm Springs’ 100º weather a few Augusts ago, feeling Limitless. In that moment I was Buzz Aldrin.