I like to think I’m hot. I like to think I’m cool, too. In reality, I am neither — unless I have to stick a big, heavy air conditioner in the bedroom window and another in the office window, in which case, if I even survive, I am both.

For the past 26 years, which is how long my wife, Sue, and I have lived in our house, we have vowed to get central air conditioning.

And every year, when the place starts to feel like a sauna and I feel like sitting around in a towel, which really gets Sue steamed, I have had to lug not one but two bulky air conditioners upstairs and install them in the corresponding windows without having a heart attack, throwing my back out or rupturing a vital organ.

Then there is the danger of dropping one of the huge metal appliances on my foot, breaking my big toe and walking around for the rest of my life with a pronounced limp, which, for those of you who have never experienced such agony because you already have central air, is pronounced “limp.”

In the past few years, I have had help from both our son-in-law and our contractor, for which I am relieved, grateful and — most important — alive.

But now that I am 70, an age at which dragging a garbage can to the curb is a health hazard, I figured it was stupid even by my low standards to still be dealing with air conditioners.

So we contacted Adam Harris, an equipment specialist for our home heating company, to come over, size up the joint and help us select a central air conditioning system at a price reasonable enough to be paid in — that’s right! — cold cash.

“Will central air offset my hot air?” I asked.

“Yes,” Adam assured me. “But the system may have to work pretty hard.”

“I hope it doesn’t overheat,” I said.

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