Note: this was written in response to a thing I saw on FB. Now, I’ve taken to not engaging and trying to be right online, but this tickled me AND aroused my need to defend summer as a season, especially since all of the fall aficionados can’t hide their glee for much longer. Thing is, I wrote this…and then proceeded to dip below 80. So my wrath was…late? Betrayed by Mother Nature proving her point herself. Ah, well. I had fun writing it.

Ray Bradbury, in his excellent book “Zen: The Art of Writing” asks the reader “How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or real hatred somehow got onto the paper?” That emotion shows through the writing, and I think this did too. Only thing was, my timing was off. Or Mother Nature’s. SOMEBODY was off.

Anyway…

I will not harsh your mellow; time passes, and soon it will be Spooky Szn and the reign of pumpkin and turkey, and you will find abject joy. Meanwhile we, the children of Summer, dread the coming of our mortal enemy. You bemoan Mother Nature’s Broil setting, but act like she doesn’t have a Flash Freeze button, too.

We wouldn’t have minded the three day stretch of days below 75 if you’d have simply shut up about it. Instead, we got wishes and dreams and pronouncements about how you simply cannot WAIT for fall. You got caught out there, twisting in a cooler, drier wind, wishing for something that has yet to come. Meanwhile, the force of corporations loom behind you, eager to restock store shelves in aisles labeled HOLIDAY and introducing orange products where there were none before. Do you really want that?

You say we have fooled ourselves, that just because we had summers off as kids, that we still hold a childish affinity for these warmer months. If you were an adult living in cooler climes, though, you recognize summer for what it is; an answer and a rebuttal of these days where Mother Nature wants you frozen. Where that wintry bitch wants your skin scraped away by snow blowing sideways at high velocities, where any weak point in your fur and leather armor will expose you to hypothermia and the very real feeling of impending death, frozen in place and peed on by dogs in fuzzy, handmade sweaters who think you’re a lamppost.

Can you just allow us the mirth of a Slurpee? Of napping in front of a fan? Wearing novelty T-shirts for as long as we can? Or do you just hate those of us who make Summer our business? Shut yo ass up and wait your turn, and after we get done with fall, you better not say a gotdamned thing about it being too cold.