“You know what I realized that’s getting me a little down?”
“No, what’s that?”
“I waited so long for summer this year.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, this past winter, swe actually had blizzards and everything for once, and it was so, so cold for so long.”
“Yeah?”
“And it was night for two-thirds of the day for six months.”
“Yeah?”
“And I slept for more hours than I went outside for nine months.”
“Yeah?”
“And did I mention it was so cold for so long?”
“Yeah.”
“OK, so now, it’s here.”
“Yeah?”
“Summer. At long last. So much Sun, so much warmth, so much time.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, it’s the same amount of time each day, but it feels like more time, you know?”
“Yeah?”
“And then it hit me.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s going the other way now.”
“Yeah – what?”
“Summer Solstice. First day of summer. June 21 in this half of the globe.”
“Yeah?”
“I used to look forward to it every year because it’s the start of summer, the beginning of everything good and fun and awesome and relaxing and wonderful.”
“Yeah?”
“And this year I suddenly realized: it’s not really the beginning of the beginning, it’s actually the beginning of the end.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, if Winter Solstice is that happy moment where we start gaining one minute of sunshine each day, then the horrible opposite must be true.”
“Yeah?”
“With Summer Solstice, with lose one minute of sunshine each day.”
“Yeah? Oh, yeah.”
“Which means, every day of what I thought was amazing summer actually is getting shorter and shorter and shorter with every passing tilt of the planet on its axis!”
“Yeah?”
“It’s spring that’s the sunshine-gainer! But it rains for almost the entire time, and then we don’t get the awesome weather and the liberating release from school into fun and vacations and parties until the end of it!”
“You haven’t been to school in decades.”
“Not the point!”
“Yeah?”
“Every moment, summer is slipping away from us, and the cruel irony is that we think we’re deep in the heart of it! It’s so unfair!”
“Yeah?”
“Why does everything good seem to happen when it’s on its way out the door?”
“That’s life, I suppose.”
“That’s a weak argument for an intolerable situation.”
“Well, what can I tell you: it’s always been this way, and you have practically two whole months of not even noticing the earlier sunsets, so if that isn’t summer, then I don’t know what is.”
“Twenty-four-hour sunlight and constant hot weather.”
“I suggest you move to Venus, then.”
“Oh ha-ha; I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“I just want a whole season’s worth of constant sunshine to tide me over into the deep freeze with weird warm days thrown in there and the long nights of horrible, horrible late-fall, all-of-winter, and half of spring.”
“Well, even though we’re at the beginning of the end, it’s still light out after 9 p.m., so that’s something in the plus column for you.”
“…I’ll take it.”