January 14th, 2006, 2:39 am

Understanding at 38 degrees Fahrenheit

When I was younger, I used to come home from school, pour myself a large glass of milk and read the Phoenix Gazette over a healthy snack, like half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. (It was, you see, back before they were Cooler.)

And so every year I would read the dutiful daily story of the rising cost of heating bills during the winter — usually, happening some place that was cold, and far away and foreign, like Minneapolis.

Old people died in droves in tiny, shuttered apartment buildings in Chicago, too cheap or too poor to pay their bills, or too passive to decide to die outright.

Sometimes there would even be a feature story — something heartwarming — perhaps around the paper’s Season Of Sharing giftgifting drive — of an immigrant family huddled in one room, missing home and warmth.

Safe in the desert, my understanding was academic until this year and this night — 38 degrees in Atlanta, 27 with wind chill. Trying to sleep in my Cabbagetown house that’s as drafty as I am, with a bed under a window that has its own respiratory system, tossing and turning, I am thinking of my $300 gas bill.

And so I crept down here in sweatshirt and slippers to tell the Internet that I am now cold, and I understand.