Summer Dreams

It's definitely Summer, so Janet's Summer Memories inquiry is a timely one.

I've never cared for the really hot and humid days. My neighborhood friends were athletic juggernauts, a few years younger than me and undeterred when the thermometer hit 100 degrees. When I would have stayed in to play video games, they forced me to play basketball. I really should have kept in touch with them after I started going to college. Summer was an eternity, and I cherished every minute outdoors, whether sweating on a field or reclining under a shady tree with a comic book.

I remember my first real Fourth of July party as an “adult”. At 23, I thought I had it all. I had a real job and a steady girl, and homework and exams were things of the past. Granted, I'd soon realize the job paid practically nothing once I realized how much the real world cost, and the girl would leave after a few years, but that moment, that blissful naiveté of youth was a good one. We laughed with friends and enjoyed a barbecue, then had to leave early because it was a Friday night, and back then my dad and I still played with a Summer band by the shore, every Friday in July. My girlfriend and her sister watched the show with my mom, and afterward the three of us tried to return to our friend's party. We sat in traffic for an hour, trying to get into a beachfront town with only one road leading to it. We saw most of the fireworks from the car, and arrived in time to walk to the beach and meet up with party stragglers and relax.

Some of my best Fourth of July weekends were spent out in Montauk, when a high school pal's parents moved out there. They let him and his friends stay out there for a long weekend of beaches, beers, bikinis and bonfires. Depending on what days my parades fell, I'd either show up a day later than everyone else or have to leave a day earlier. The tradition only lasted two or three years, but sitting around a fire on a beach in the true middle of nowhere was an amazing escape to forget about work and life's problems. Reality resumed soon enough, but for two or three days I had sort of a vacation from it. Even the year I almost drowned in the ocean was a good one. Sure, a wave slammed into me just as an undertow yanked my feet from under me. And yes, I can't swim and wasn't wearing a vest, and when I tried to swim I was so disoriented that I hit sand before I realized I was going the wrong direction. Somehow I found my footing, and standing on the tips of my toes I could keep my nose above water. I saw the shore, and shaking all the way I trudged forward, praying another big wave wouldn't hit before I reached shallower waters. It was a good year because I almost drowned, but lived to tell a pretty good tale about it. Sometimes I wonder if I did die, and every memory since then has been a dream occuring in the fraction of a second before my last breath.

Barbecues are always fun. Some of my best memories are of college gatherings on campus, relaxing by a grill, kicking a soccer ball around, or climbing trees. Those annual shindigs heralded the end of classes and the start of Summer, and just before it was time to go back I'd have a gathering in my parent's yard. I always overdid things, buying nearly $200 worth of food for less than twenty people. I ate well for weeks after those gatherings, and always had plenty of dessert, turning our kitchen table into a make-your-own-sundae bar. Eventually, it became harder to coordinate. Friends got busy with work, marriage, or starting families. My girlfriend broke up with me, and for a while I simply wasn't in the mood to socialize. I joined more bands, and found more weekends booked. As for my trusty grill, after the lighter broke, other parts went as well. It still sits somewhere in the yard, but my dad strongly recommends that I don't trust it not to explode. Someday I'll get a new one, or get my own house and, when I finally do, a barbecue will be my first priority.

Camping trips were always fun. I went on three major trips with my friends back in college. The first time, we really roughed it, sleeping in tents. There was one structure in the middle of the woods, a brick building with broken screen doors and functional sinks and toilets. At night, unspeakable insects coated the screens. It wasn't as rough as some campers go, but it was rough enough for five city boys and one Long Islander. The next two times, we rented trailers with full plumbing and electricity. There aren't many people who can associate playing Soul Edge with a camping trip, but I fall into that group.

I also fell into some classic MCF moments. I almost always had a bad sunburn. My friends tormented me with water pistols. Once we rented bikes. I was the only one with a flat tire, and when they loaded up our van I had to walk a few feet behind, rolling my bike. My friend would go slow, then speed up when I almost caught up. The most infamous incident is the now (unfortunately) legendary “I want answers!” tale. After staying up all night to see a friend off who was leaving very early in the morning, I decided to get an hour or two of sleep before we left. As everyone was packing, one of my friends decided to try the old hand-in-a-bucket-of-warm-water trick. He used nigh scalding hot water, and when nothing happened, he apparently took the pot of water and just dumped it on me.

I was so out of it, I still didn't wake up, at least not right away. As warm water seeped through my jeans, dreams of being on fire seeped into my subconscious. I leapt up disoriented, screaming about burning and almost hitting the ceiling as I fell out of a bunk bed while my buddies in the hall just fell about the place laughing. I ran out into the living room, a normally quiet soul now livid. I was shouting, and everyone was laughing, and in a move that will haunt me to my grave, I whipped off my belt in one fell swoop, slammed it into a table and screamed, “I WANT ANSWERS!!”

All but one stopped laughing, and I think Rey even edged toward the door, because as he told me years later, he thought I was finally going to snap and kill people. Every time we all got together since then, one of my friends would recount the tale, embellishing it every time with language and metaphors but never changing a detail or fact. Now he's married with a kid, Rey's married with 2.5 kids, and even the guy who poured the water on me and continued to laugh in the face of a psychotic breakdown is married with a little girl. I keep in touch with most of my college friends, occasionally even see two or three of them, but it's been years since we've all been in the same room at the same time, and laughed at that story. I used to hate it, but actually miss it now.

Life is change. The best times it seems are often in our youth, though we don't realize it at the time. “Youth is wasted on the young,” as an elderly trumpet playing friend of mine always says. Time moves on, but our memories remain. I'll always remember water parks, tubing, being towed by a speedboat, camping trips, barbecues and more. And just because a lot of those friends and adventures are in the past, doesn't mean new ones aren't in the future. I've been to air shows in recent years as well as countless photography adventures exploring the world around me. And the last barbecue I attended resulted in a video posting that's actually starting to piss people off. “Okay, why the XXXX do you guys think we care what you think of Cloverfield???“ asked one irate YouTube patron. I actually didn't expect anyone to care over there, so 15,569 hits later I find it all hilarious.

As always, Janet posted a great topic, and this was a fun trip down memory lane. What new memories await? Keep reading, CloakFriends, keep reading...