The Secret Meaning of Hot Flashes

As I was marching across the tundra, mile after mile this morning, taking my garbage to the dumpster in the rain, I noticed that the rain was not actually penetrating the heat shield barrier around my body. The water was, in fact, sizzling into vapor the moment before it reached my actual flesh.

And this is when it dawned on me! In order to assure the survival of the species, Nature devised this amazing thing called Hot Flashes. Imagine generations of arboreal and mud-dawber clans dying out because they did not have any old women around to impart knowledge and demand accountability of the young. They did not have any old women around because as we know, most tribal cultures drive their elderly into the swamps or the snow once they are no longer of use to the clan and thus become a gaggle of useless mouths to feed.

And thus it became that our feminine DNA decided to morph itself into a midlife Heat Radiation Source, so that all the tribal peoples could gather round and get warm and stay dry in bad weather. Not only did this keep the People from freezing to death in the long winters, it insured that they were a captive audience for the storytelling, scolding and law enforcement of the Wise Old Crones of the Clan.

The fact that we have evolved away from being jungle creatures in igloos and yurts squatting over a toasty Matron in order to cook our strips of yak meat has not yet sunk into our DNA. And that is why we have millions of women wandering around emitting nuclear heat with no one to whom it might benefit.

I don't know about you, but if I can find a noble reason for the sudden 100° rise in body temperature resulting in the swamp sweats and brain fog of a hot flash, I can better put up with them. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.