So the French-speaking world has me to thank when they sit down to enjoy such marvels as Get Thin and Get Rich; Shame on Me, Doctor!; Why Am I Gaining Weight? (UK Edition); Renovate Your Life; Crazy Screw-Ups; Surprise Birth!; Ultimate Humiliation; Job Swap (Australian Edition); Babysitter Spy; Polygamous and Proud; 36 Hours, No Sleep: Safari Edition; Better Living Through Surgery; The Torturers: Asia vs. America; Down Syndrome Heirs; Extreme World Tour (Autistic Special); Crazy Teenagers; Hoarding (Season 5); Animal Lovers; and the list goes on.

Maybe one day they’ll let me make my own show. It’ll be something about morbidly obese women who don’t know they’re pregnant and have to swap husbands while renovating their houses to put them on the market. Don’t worry, everyone will be under medical supervision. The show will be sponsored by a popular brand of ham or margarine, or maybe an over-the-counter heartburn medication. I just need to find the right title.

I’m hungry. There’s nothing to eat. I need to go outside.

Why, you may ask, must I endure the indignity of roasting like a rotisserie chicken on the corner of a treeless street on this fine July 16? Why, to deposit a cheque at the bank, of course. Crossing this heat island is the final step before reaching the air-conditioned cell that houses the closest ATM. I can already picture the oily buttons, with the green “OK” worn away by thousands of greasy fingers indicating their agreement to the machine’s statement.

My employer has arranged it so I am legally self-employed, which spares them the expense of an actual employee. To top it off, they insist on paying me with actual paper cheques, issued every two weeks. Hello, 1965.

The pictogram across the avenue is blinking white. I cross the street, fantasizing about the ice cube I’ll melt on my neck once I get home. In the middle of the road I feel a hot wind, much hotter than the black asphalt, and hear a cacophony of engine sounds and honking. A black SUV turning the corner avoids crushing me by a matter of inches. The driver gives me the finger, then speeds off in a screech of burnt rubber. Bastard did it on purpose.

Usually drivers are satisfied to stomp on the accelerator after they’ve let a pedestrian cross. It’s their charming little way of making it clear that we’ve wasted their precious time, since they have far more important places to go than we lowly walkers. They rarely go so far as to graze us. Just an angry squeal of tires and a jerky peel-out, though they’re going to have to stop all over again in another 150 metres. But being grazed, with a middle finger to boot, that’s new.