Summer Sucks So Much It Hurts

If you've known me for any length of time, you know I generally try and be an optimistic sort of guy. Cheerful. Happy-go-lucky. Trying to find the good in it all. And I'm the way about most things, even things I don't necessarily like.

Except for summertime. I fu*king hate the summertime.

Just about every rotten thing that has ever happened to me has taken place at the start, during, or near the tail end of summer. Ahh, the end of summer - like a date ending without a kiss. Like a hug from a betrayer. Like a middle finger flavored sunset.

Every instance of having my heart broken, most friends' moving, jobs ending, car accidents, baseball games lost, dogs dying, and most other horrific occurrences have taken place during the summer. It's like hope and goodness and romance hit the 90-degree heat and begin to asphyxiate, barely clinging to life by the time September rolls around. Resuscitation by fall colors, bourbon cocktails, apple and pecan pies, and Halloween costumes become desperately needed.

Heartache especially seems to linger around the dog days of August. Baseball teams drop to the bottom of the standings, finally ending the boyhood dreams of spring. Girls leave. Sometimes across town to a new school. Sometimes across the country to a new life. Sometimes you leave, and after a couple of weeks you realize - no one misses you. What a downer.

Pools close, chasing children indoors to terrorize their parents. School starts up again, the excitement of new backpacks and notebooks and classes quickly replaced by the doldrums of being stuck inside whilst the very best playing weather of the year drifts by outside the windows.

Carnivals, amusement parks, and waterparks shut down. When you pass them, your windows tightly shut to keep out the 100-degree heat, the irony seems cruel and unfair.

Every run is agony. Every walk cut short. Every dream of a six-pack (or a four-pack or at least better eating habits) gone, "like Elvis and his mom," to quote the rock poet and surfer Jon Foreman.

Summer sucks so much it hurts.

Speaking of hurt, my dog is getting old. The end feels in sight. This would, of course, happen right at the end of summer. A few nights ago, I carried her nearly 80-pound body up the stairs to bed so she wouldn't have to make the journey on back legs that have been quitting on her for the past couple of years. She's a good old girl, Luna pup.

We found her when she was only six months old. She was skittish and scared, advertised as a German Shepherd on Craigslist. When we arrived to see her - in some parking lot off the highway - she got out of the car and strolled up on a leash. Face of a German Shepherd. Body of a warthog. I'd never seen another dog like her, and few since. I knew, instantly, she was mine.

It turns out, like the very best of us, she was a mutt. Mostly Norwegian Elkhound, but with some other breeds mixed in for flavor. Luna is all heart. Last night she stood at the bottom of the stairs and gently barked until I came down and got her - she couldn't bear to not be at her usual nightly resting places up the stairs - by our bed or guarding the hall outside of my children's rooms.

Ahhh, summer, you old son of a bitch. We're nearly to the end of you now, and I both mourn what I feel like I've already lost, and wait anxiously to see if you'll take anything else from me.

Soon the weather will turn cooler. Scarves and jackets and coats will come from their hiding places at the end of closet racks and be brushed off and donned anew. The leaves will change color, turning everything overhead to fiery shades of yellow, red, orange, and gold. The nights will get colder and darker sooner. The pumpkin-flavored everything will return. Gross, but also, thank God.

One thing I've noticed in my lifetime - which has neither been particularly long or always eventful - is that the harsher a summer feels on the heart, the softer and more memorable the fall swoops in to heal and soften. One of life's small mercies, maybe?

Till then, there are a little over two weeks left to go this summer. The first day of Fall will be a Saturday. And if the summer is anything to go off of, it looks like it'll be a good one.

Cheers.