photo courtesy of Pixabay

Living Madly: I Hate Summer

By Emilie-Noelle Provost

Although I appreciate fresh local vegetables and not having to scrape ice off my windshield, summer and I really don’t get along. Every May, I’m overcome by a sense of dread because summer is coming, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I loathe the season’s wet, sticky heat, the biting flies, not being able to wear a real pair of jeans. By the end of June, I’m already sick of living off of salad, and tired of normal household activities, like doing laundry, making me sweat through what little clothing I’m able to tolerate. For much of the summer, I can’t hike or garden or do most other things I like to do. All I can do is wait it out, and hope I don’t die of heatstroke.

I liked summer when I was a kid, mostly because I didn’t have to go to school and could more or less do whatever I wanted for a couple of months. Plus, the summers back then weren’t nearly as hot as they are now. It was rare for the temperature to climb above 100 degrees. And if we did get a day hotter than 100, it was only once every couple of years.

By the time anyone reads this, we will have had two days hotter than 100 degrees and 15 days above 90 degrees this year. And it’s only mid-July.

Even taking all of this into consideration, not liking summer is something that’s tough to publicly admit because most people seem to love it—something I’ve never understood.

If I happen to mention that I don’t like summer in front of a group of people, some perky summer-loving person will inevitably say, “But how can you hate summer when winter is so long and cold and dark? Summer is so short! It just flies by!”

Not quickly enough, if you ask me.

Beside the fact that I despise being hot, I’m also not a big fan of most traditional summer activities. Sitting on the beach feels like being marooned in the Sahara, and even if it didn’t, I’m as white as a hotel bedsheet. Barbecues = bugs. Amusement parks, forced fun. I don’t like swimming or boats or riding in convertibles. There are only so many Popsicles a person can eat.

I’ve tried a lot of tips for keeping cool that I’ve found online: Pull down the shades during the day. Don’t open the windows unless the temperate outside is lower than it is inside. Spray water on yourself and sit in front of a fan.

At least when it’s cold outside, I can put on a coat and some gloves and go about my day like a normal person.

So, while I’m stuck in the only room in my 103-year-old house that has air conditioning, I’ll be dreaming about crisp autumn mornings, cozy firesides, sweaters, and drinking tea with one of my cats on my lap. I’ll be thinking about snow and early sunsets while everyone else I know is having a great time sweltering around some hotel pool or being eaten alive by mosquitoes at a scorching backyard cookout.

I’ll see you all in October.

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Émilie-Noëlle Provost is the author of The River Is Everywhere, a National Indie Excellence Award, American Fiction Award, and American Legacy Award finalist, and The Blue Bottle, a middle-grade adventure with sea monsters. Visit her at emilienoelleprovost.com.