HOW HOT IS IT?

Most of the country has been suffering through an incredible heat wave lately.  Triple digit temperatures for days and days.  I have never been a huge fan of summer because I do not like the heat.  So I know it's been really hot when I go outside on a 96 degree day and announce, "Well, it's not too bad out here!"  Anyway, I started wondering about the crazy expressions we have that refer to heat.  Of course, there are the obvious ones...hot as hell...hot as fire...hot enough to fry a frog on a lily pad (I'm not too sure if that is a common expression, or one my Dad made up.  He was always doing that to make me laugh.)

So - with a little research, I came up with a list that has some more "original sounding" expressions:

• It is so hot the birds have to use potholders to pull worms out of the ground.
• It's hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch.
• It's hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock.
• It's so hot that I tied my mule in a field of corn, and the corn started popping and the mule thought it was snow and froze to death! (Ok...really lame.)
• It's so hot I saw two trees fighting over a dog.
• It's hotter than a hoot'n poot. (I have no idea what that means!)
• It's so hot that the trees are creeping around looking for shade.
• It's hotter than the devil's underpants.
• It is hot enough to cure tobacco.
• It's so hot that it makes me want to take off my skin and sit in my bones.

Language is amazing.  We are not content with simply saying it is hot...we have to reach inside our imagination and come up with wild and woolly explanations to communicate with one another.  We want to make someone else actually "feel" the heat, just by using our words. 

Or, perhaps there is a little bit of my Dad in all of us.  We want to make each other laugh.  Humor makes everything more bearable - even the hottest of days.

Now...if I could just figure out what "hoot'n poot" means.