"Miss Blackhaired Barbie, you sure do bitch an awful lot about this time of year. Is there anything you like about summer?"
That's right, folks. It's Topic Control and today, someone wanted me to look at the glass as half full and talk about the stuff I love about the ghastly heatfuckmonster known as a the season of summer. This is a great topic. It's also quite a few hours since it was given to me and I'm still trying to come up with some good answers.
I used to love summer, basically because I was a child and summer meant no school. There was more to it than that though. When I was a kid, I got to enjoy the various aspects of summer more. I loved VBS. In fact, I loved it so much that back when I was still participating in organized religion, I would run the crafts portion of the VBS activities at church. Now that I'm thinking about it, I loved VBS a lot as a kid. It was probably my favorite part about summer.
I also used to love summer with Mom. Mom was at her glorious crazy best during summer. She would roam around in flipflops, cutoffs, and sunglasses. She would drink all morning and then drive us to the lake. We'd swim until she was pretty sure she was getting close to being too drunk to drive home. The evening would be spent outside with big stars in the skies and the sounds of crickets and whippoorwills. By the way, I had no idea whippoorwill was spelled that way. I always thought it was "whipperwill." Whip poor Will sounds more like the title of a bondage story.
As a kid, I loved basking in summer daytime television. I loved The Price is Right. I did not like watching the lame local news, but afterwards, Gran's hours of soap operas would begin, and that was fun to do with her. Soap operas move so slowly that you can miss nine months of them and still know what's going on. Once you figure out which 2 yr olds were sent off to boarding school and came back as 20 yr olds, you're caught up. Other than the aging thing, almost nothing else will be different.
But that was all from my childhood and the question was about what I like about summer now. What do I like about the bug infested/child infested/grass growing/sweaty/hot as fuck/car parked in the shade so I have to walk farther/people setting off fireworks hellfest that is summer?
I have better access to fresh fruits and veggies. People around here have gardens and where there is gardens, there is fresh, wonderful things that taste far better than the stuff they pass off on us in the store.
Because I can turn the cold water all the way up, I have really great water pressure for my showers. The water pressure in this house leaves a lot to be desired. During the winter, I use only enough cold water to keep the hot from burning me. But in the summer, I can turn the cold all the way on, which means I have this awesome level of water pressure.
You know though, I have to say what I like best about summer is my memories of it. So much of our childhood is spent in school, and those days tend to bleed into each other. It's difficult to sort them out. Because summer was such a special time (no school does equate to special, ya know), the memories are more vivid. Besides the one I listed above, I have some favorites, even if they are kind of ordinary.
I loved sitting in the back yard with my grandmother and snapping peas.
I loved leaning against her as she would read to me.
Some years my cousins would come down during the summer and we'd spend the whole time in one adventure after another.
I loved the feeling of riding in a car with the windows down while I was in clothes wet from the lake.
I loved being outside and hearing my mother's radio playing from inside.
On nights when it was too hot to sleep without the AC, we'd all pile into the living room. Usually we would tell stories and laugh for longer than we should have before finally sleeping.
Wow. Now I really miss my grandparents and my mom. Hmm. I guess that is what I love the most about summer, more than anything else. Summer was about a little girl getting to spend more time with the people who wouldn't be there forever. Summer gave me the most hours I would get to be with them.
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