Summertime and the Livin's Easy
Summer! The sweetest season of them all is officially here, and thank goodness, right? I mean, who doesn’t love summer (besides polar bears and weird people like my brother who prefer the average temperature to be closer to 60 than 85)?
Without a doubt, summer is my favorite season for countless reasons: long walks on the beach, afternoon thundershowers, gently swaying with the breeze in a backyard hammock. WAIT…Is it just me, or does that sound like the start of a bad romance novel? Yeah, I thought so.
Let’s try this again:summer is my favorite season for countless reasons: no school, trips to Charleston, sleeping late, cookouts, poolside gossip sessions with the girls, sundresses, 4th of July parties, the beach, and of course flip-flops (or lip-lops as my mom says, referring to my inability to combine the letters F and L when I was younger).
All of these great things are a constant whether you’re in high school or college, however, after you’ve finished those first two semesters….there is one thing that will undoubtedly change. In high school, you mainly spent the summers with the same 5-10 people, right? Your ‘group’, ‘clique’, or ‘posse’ (if you prefer to think of yourself as rap artist, which I suppose some of you might?!). Anyway, by the end of the summer, there’s usually two of you who despise each other, or instead of 10 friends, it becomes more like 2 groups of 5…usually due to some childish argument that everyone knows is ridiculous but too immature at the time to admit it. After that first year of college, it’s great to see all of your old friends again and time has probably healed any harsh feelings between members of your ‘group’. Things go back to normal, memories are retold, inside jokes become hilarious again, but then….something strange occurs. You start pining away for the amazingly wonderful people you met in college. Whether it’s your new best friend who you still talk to every single day or the crazy kid next door that made beats on his computer until 3 a.m. causing you to wake up feeling like you have a metronome inside of your head (true story, by the way), you begin to miss all of the people you met in the 9 months you were away.
And THAT….is another new thing I love about summer! Instead of feeling obligated to hang out with one small group of friends, you now have people all over the country to go see! I just recently got back from Mechanicsville, Virginia (right outside of Richmond) to visit Meghan, one of my best friends while in college. Mechanicsville….doesn’t that seem like the perfect name for a town in one of those creepy horror films. I can see it now, young couple gets a flat tire and the local mechanic in Mechanicsville is some crazy ax murderer. (And of course somewhere in the movie there has to be the crazy cat lady who helps them out.) Hollywood Screenwriters Guild…here I come!
Okay, back to the point: summer is great and even better when you can visit all of the wonderful people you’ll meet in college.
So high school seniors, or rather high school graduates, enjoy your summers! And remember to plan for a few unexpected road trips next year.