No.2~ What Are Dog Days, Why Are They Over
Summer has befallen the northern hemisphere. That is not an opinion or anything. It's quite literally past the point where days are getting longer up here, north of the Equator, also, north of the country of Ecuador. Why do they get to lay claim to that word? They really should share it, I mean, many other countries fall on along the Equator. Maybe not all that many, but definitely a handful. That would be like changing the name of Russia to Snow. The great country of Snow, part of the former Union of Snowviet Snowcialist Republics. The capital of which, of course, would have been Iciclegrad. Obviously.
I find it particularly interesting that, once you are no longer in school, the idea of summer becomes a quickly dissipating memory. I desperately would love to reminisce here about the great joys of summers past, but that seems like it would be terribly depressing to not only me, but mostly to me, as I am he who matters.
To be honest, I kind of don't even remember summers. What did we even do for summer when we were kids? At the risk of sounding like the lame grown up lawyer version of Peter Pan in 'Hook', (Hook reference quota, CHECK), I really have trouble imagining what in the hell I would even do today with three months of just unadulterated nothingness. It does not sound like the non-stop, uncontrollable parade of amusement that I remember.
I definitely remember going outside a lot. I guess the pool was a thing, bikes, stuff like that, but I am really more curious what we as kids did outside of "normal business hours." That is to say, what kids USED to do, back when they had to invent their own fun, before top-quality screen-based entertainment, specifically of the interactive variety, was readily available to literally almost everyone and cost as much as a small-to-moderate-sized handful of ripe kumquats. Let's face it, Carter and Reagan Babies (oh you were born in the HW Bush era? Shut up. There could have been iPods in your hands before you even stopped believing in Santa Claus). Pick one piece of technology you use today purely for entertainment. If you had that thing when you were 7 or 8 years old, you and I know that you wouldn't ever have done shit outside of your house. You would have sat in there, playing Super Mario Theft Auto of Duty 4 until your eyes, ears, and thumbprints were bleeding, and we would all now be a nation of lazy, overweig- whoops, nevermind.
But in the time before all that, before American childhood imagination was replaced by Sony presents Apple iCreativeThinking Suite for Toddlers Aged 2-15, what did we do? It is certainly not like I went to Bally Total Fitness and just got jacked and tan out of boredom when I was 8 years old, right? I feel like I would remember At Least that much.
Side Question: Maybe this is the death of my childhood innocence (which, fun fact, officially died when saw Pauly Shore's 'In The Army Now' at the age of ten), but was the ice cream truck driver always automatically assumed to be a straight up pervert criminal molester nightmare? Or is it our modern society, hell-bent on finding new means by which our childrens' lives are in grave, unavoidable danger, which has sullied that profession?
In closing: summer. Remember what it was like back before you experienced it for 2.75 minutes on your walk between the car and the front door of the office? Next time I put my back to the hand dryer in the restroom in order to dry up some of the sweat that has fully drenched my dress shirt, I'll be sure to think of those memories.
