The Joys of Summer

My clock-thermometer in my room reads 80.6 degrees right now. It's 10:38 and I've had a fan going for a solid hour. As I so eloquently described to a friend earlier today, it's balls hot out.

I'd have it no other way.

I think I'd make a great bear. A black bear (because it's the best type of bear). Hibernation would be the coolest thing this side of clock-thermometers (which brings to mind other idiotically impossible yet amazing noun combinations — television-microwaves, beer-air conditioners, and toilet-coolers … take a second to figure those out). The winter just doesn't have anything desirable. It's cold, trees are barren, the wind is frigid, and hockey is played. There's an odious lack of odor, the sun doesn't have the same sensation, snow zips sideways into your eyes, the only thing you hear is teeth chattering, and somehow it tastes bad. In a sense (or all five senses), it sucks.

But when the calendar flips a few pages and months start to become less difficult to say (May, June and July aren't exactly going to be in any Scripps Spelling Bees anytime soon), there a different side of me that comes out. It's almost … nice. Summer forces a grin when you're driving down the road and you can smell summer, that aroma of flowers and allergies blended into one. It proves that in days, the best is truly saved for the last — the nights when temperatures drop along with the afternoon's stresses. It proves that even when it's hot enough to melt a spoon, you embrace the fact that it's not as icy as Danica after a spinout (talk about a cold person). Summer drenches kids in fun, a season when fire hyrdrants, slip-and-slides, and Super Soakers get their due.

I really have a soft spot for summer, for bonfires and swimming pools, for rounds of golf and rounds of beer, for days on the beach and days under the AC (for the record, that's my only soft spot ... that can be taken a few ways). Even when it's balls hot outside, it's nice to think how cool it is for it to be summer.