I can’t wait for Summer.
I can’t wait for Summer.
Well it’s here alright and I gotta ask you summer enthusiasts exactly what you were waiting for? The part where you get to walk the streets 90% naked? The part when you sweat so badly you stick to everything? Pulling wet lycra out of your folds? Maybe it’s when the beach sand gets caught inside your craw. I’ve never understood the infatuation.
And just it time for the Fourth of July, a crucial heat wave invading the east coast. Eating in the heat is not enjoyable. Nor is sitting, standing or trying not to lose your patience. Steam coming out of the ground or tourists parked in the center of the sidewalk studying a map. The stench of garbage. The street person laying on their back blocking the entire sidewalk. This isn’t normal, though I do remember just how much worse it was to endure the heat in Manhattan. The subway was hell on earth, especially if you got trapped next to a person who ate curry the night before. Or garlic. Or onions.
I never learned to swim, so hanging at a pool or the beach doesn’t offer me any solace. I almost drowned in a lake when I was ten. It was a family vacation. My brother swam out to the sand bar and taunted me to match his feat. So I doggy paddled out and was just a few feet away when my legs cramped and my paddling turned into flailing. I was drowning. I screamed toward my parents. They screamed to my brother to save me. My brother looked down at me and said just stand up!
Seems I was drowning in just a foot of water. Well that squashed my hopes of ever learning to swim. One scarring childhood trauma was enough. Add to that swimming lessons in grammar school gym class where we were issued community navy blue speedos that may or may not have been sanitized in between uses. I called in sick those dreadful days.
So I never learned.
Making matters worse during this scorcher is a view from my living room window of a high rise complete with a rooftop pool. The capacity looks to be maxed out and the fancy Pina Coladas are a’plenty. Well good for them. I’m enjoying my three showers per day thank you very much.
No swimming required.
But back to the disgusting wherewithal that is the summer, that most beloved of seasons. Once you’re all heated up you head to the grill and flip burgers. The smell gets trapped in your sweaty parts and pretty soon some furry dog is your new best friend. Grossness. Stuff like macaroni salad tries hard to not turn green in the sweltering heat offering food poisoning with every possible bite you take. You try to avoid looking at other people cuz they look ridiculous, but then you catch yourself analyzing their exposed paws and hooves. A bit of spit up gets caught in the back of your throat.
All I think about during the summer is the fall. That sophisticated look of layered wool. The crispness of the air. That nighttime chill when you can nurse a tumbler of scotch instead of brain freezing on some foo-foo fruity concoction sipped through a straw. Much more civil. I was born in Fairfield County, Connecticut which is the ultimate experience in civility during the fall or as they call it … Autumn. Hoity-Toity.
Strangely I migrated south throughout my life with stops in New York, New Jersey and now Philadelphia. Had I been pointed due north, I could be in Bangor, Maine by now.
It’s only 93° up there.