WHAT DO I LIKE ABOUT SUMMER?

 

5/24/10

What Do I Like About Summer?

Nothing! That's right; summer is the worst season of the year. I know that people love it, especially kids such as I who hated school and wanted the freedom to sport around without parental admonitions about studying and looking nice for school and whatever blather they thought pertinent to our lives. It was, without a doubt sheer blather; parents typically can't let their offspring run around doing their thing. They always know better and impose it as much as they can. Of course, the older the kid, less control they have. Tough!

But, memories of my parents are not the only reason I especially dislike summer. After all, whatever the season, they are always around knowing better and much of a kid's life is spent fending them off.

Summer has its own idiocy. First, it is much, much too hot. In Brooklyn, the air was moist as well as hot, providing me with sticky heat that literally poured off my body in droplets of excess sweat. In Colorado, the air is dry and the heat has a tendency to crisp the body. Neither is acceptable to me . . . nor to any right-thinking person.

Another problem is that you are supposed to enjoy yourself when older doing such as swimming, and playing handball, tennis and golf. In fact, places boast about their summer recreations. All of these activities entail outdoor effort, producing more body heat and getting the body turned redder and/or browner. Feh!

Of course, there is always picnicking. What pleasure. That means dragging food out into the open air, sitting on blankets to avoid the usually moist grass and eating such foods as potato salad, cold chicken, sometimes regular salad, potato chips and other such. You don't know who made the chicken, the potato salad or the cole slaw. Of course, the chances of liking how each was made are slim. Some chicken is too dry or salty, some potato salad lacks enough mayo or has no onions and don't ask which grocery provided the coleslaw. All such food might be perfectly acceptable in a restaurant or home. In such places there are no bugs, no damned mosquitoes or bees or wasps, or creepy crawlies to partake of your goodies. By the time you sag onto the blanket to eat, the hot coffee has become cooler and the cold drinks have become warmer. There is none of such nonsense in the sanctity of the home . . . or the restaurant. Both, if properly equipped provide lovely cool air produced by that technological marvel, the air-conditioner.

As I remember it, there was a slight advantage to going to the beach . . . girls in relatively scanty swimsuits. This was the only time when frolicking was part of the zeitgeist. Typically, I would go to the beach with two or three friends. There were the usual parental injunctions to wait an hour after eating before swimming and not to get sunburned. And, of course, to watch out for the wrong kind of girl. We wouldn't admit it but we secretly longed for a kind, sweet, wrong kind of girl. We never did find one.

Girls did the same thing, showing up in a small group. They affected to look quite uninterested in us boys who were engaged in grinning like fools (well, we were, making absurd noises and cavorting around getting sand to spray on them. This was usually the icebreaker accompanied by, “Ooh, you're getting sand all over us.) One of us would respond with something like, “That's not all we want to do.” We giggled mightily at such wit as did the girls, though they were at first quite restrained. So, summer provided tentative mating rituals, though I never mated with any of them, nor did my friends. In retrospect, these were games played more seriously when we became older.

What did I prefer during summer? Reading whatever I wanted. The library was full of books that explained the world to me. Fiction taught me about romance and sex, and it even taught me something about manhood. Non-fiction filled me in on the excitements called history. But, parents, actually my mother, would nag, it's such a lovely day, why don't you go out and enjoy it. I noticed she never did, preferring to lie in bed with the radio on, smoking and reading, but speaking up was more dangerous than I cared to dare. My version of getting out was to go to a movie, sometimes twice a day. Cool!

Even though I would not admit it, autumn was better because school started. My friends and I would sit on the Ocean Parkway benches, gab, flirt and eat ice cream bars. But, parents typically screwed that up also. They would take trips to the Catskill Mountains and stay in some resort for a week. My sister was old enough to be left at home, but I was dragged along, my protests naught availing. Finally, I went to college and later forcibly entered the army. Anything was better than summers at home.