Stolen Sunshine

Musings of an Anxious Millennial Writer #02: The Summers That Never Existed

I've been writing about the summer a lot. Probably because it's the summer and I'm nothing if not on the nose, but as we enter summer’s penultimate act, I become even more reflective of this particular time of year. I think about missed opportunities and wax nostalgic for summers past. All those memories of wild teenage nights, hot summer flings, unforgettable beach house weekends—you know, all the things I've never actually experienced.

Summer fills me with the nostalgia of a time that wasn't even my own. It's the same place I return to in the dead of winter when I need hope and light. Summer is the ’90s come to life. It’s boogie boards and neon-print shorts. It’s dayglo and sun-in. It's hopping in a bright yellow jeep, sans doors, me and all my friends in matching, brightly colored sunglasses, as we head to the beach. This is all stuff never actually happened, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've even spent a day at the beach with friends, but that’s still what summer means to me, baby. I’ve hardly gone on any friend group summer trips at all, yet there's always the hope that a road trip can be embarked on. A cabana can be rented. Tan lines can be cultivated. Bliss can be achieved.

In my teen years, I spent most summers sitting in the blazing sun at the public pool, reading young adult romance novels about teens having way more fun (and definitely way more sex) than I was having. Let's be real here, would ever have. I vividly recall one year sending a postcard to my friend Mary Ellen in the summer before eighth grade. I hadn't been anywhere; I just bought some postcards from Barnes and Noble and thought they'd be fun to send. Mary Ellen had been away for the summer break—most of my friends would go on trips. Some of their families had summer houses. Many had large families with yearly excursions and reunions that would take up large chunks of the summer break.

I mostly went to the public pool. That is when I wasn’t going to work with my mom at the racetrack office she worked in on Saturday mornings. That's not to say we wouldn't have any semblance of travel—we'd often spend one or two weeks at uncles' and aunts' houses in New Jersey. They had private pools, a luxury like which we'd never know personally. For some time, my mother, grandmother, and I would spend a weekend, sometimes even two or three weekends, in Atlantic City. Those were my most memorable summer vacations—hoofing it down to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, buying cheap sandals at a store on the boardwalk, then spending the night eating vending machine Cheetos and playing Blackjack on the comfy hotel bed. All the while, my mom and grandma alternated trips downstairs to the casino (if we had been lucky enough to save up the extra money to stay in a casino hotel and not the more affordable Howard Johnson’s just off the boardwalk).  

Anyway, I sent a postcard to Mary Ellen when she got back right before school started to tell her all about the fun I had that summer. It was the first time I really discovered the movie Grease. Easily the first and most quintessential summer movie. Despite her raving about it the year before, I never gave it a chance. I finally sat down that summer and watched it from beginning to end. It awakened something in me—namely, the idea that a summer romance was possible, and everything could change in just those two magical months away from it all. And so, I set forth on a quest that summer: I would watch Grease a lot. Which I did. A lot.

But it didn’t just begin and end at Grease. After that, I spent most summers consumed with the media ideal of a teenage summer. It was in every Sarah Dessen or Meg Cabot novel I read. I became obsessed with the idea that I could easily fall in love with one of the lifeguards at the public pool. Indeed, the frosted-tipped, spiky-haired, toned bodyguard of about sixteen would look the other way when I stubbed my toes, climbing up the ladder on my way out of the kiddie pool. He'd be impressed with my paunchy stomach, chlorine-damaged hair, squinting, and tripping as I returned to my beach chair without my glasses. He'd be impressed that I was careful to cover every mole and birthmark on my face and shoulders with a healthy dollop of SPF 50. Maybe he'd even like that I was such a voracious reader and wanted to come over to me to strike up a conversation in front of my sunbathing mother and people-watching grandmother.

My thoughts would then revert to whatever boy I had a crush on during the school year. I'd imagine I’d end up at whatever beach club he belonged to. Being in that same space outside our stuffy Catholic school uniforms would make him view me differently. I’d think about impressing them at the pool party at the end of the summer with how much I had changed (usually, not at all). I wanted that first kiss to happen at a party on the beach at night, my hair windswept by the bonfire, my foot popping up behind me.

Damn you, Princess Diaries.

And I wasn’t just that. I wanted to spend the day at the boardwalk, all my friends and me on our matching orange mopeds, drinking Big Gulps. I wanted to be a social creature who didn't just binge-watch TV waiting for the air conditioner to finally kick in.

Damn you, Len.

From the first time I heard “Steal My Sunshine" from Len, I had an unrealistic view of what the summertime would look like and feel like when I became a teenager and older. There's nothing really about that song that should invoke those feelings. Still, in my nostalgic view of childhood, it's always playing in the background of summertime. It's the Malibu Dreams, Baywatch-lite, Leah Remini-episodes-of-Saved By the Bell. These teen movies took place during the school year. Still, for some reason, we're always the summer (don't ask me to elaborate on that, if you get it, you get it) that formed my opinion of summer that I hold to this day. The Parent Trap, Salute Your Shorts, and Bug Juice camp shenanigans seemed magical and mystical. Mainly because when you grow up lower middle class with a single parent working two jobs to get by, not only do you not get a vacation, you certainly don't get a whimsical summer away at a camp where you meet your twin that you never knew existed and… wow that movie’s got a really messed up premise. Maybe we’ll discuss that another time.

No matter what, even in my younger years, summer was defined by hiding from its end. From hiding in my room in the AC, wishing I could be on a beach or in a pool. Those few weeks when I would have that respite from the grind (the grind, of course, was watching repeats of shows that didn’t have new episodes until the fall), it always felt fleeting. Summer is a work of fiction and one that's always better than reality. I'll forever be envious of anyone who has an ideal summer, goes on more than one long weekend vacation, the lucky sonofabitches who have summerhouses, cabanas on the beach, hell, even part-time jobs as lifeguards or camp counselors. At this rate, give me a sprinkler system to run through, and you'll find me in a state of unadulterated bliss.

But like Billy Joel once sang,

It's just a fantasy. It's not the real thing.

Sometimes a fantasy is all you need.

And the fantasy of a perfect summer is sometimes the best place to escape, even if it's only in my mind.

And as the brilliant minds in Len once said,

I was frying on the bench slide in the park across the street

L-A-T-E-R that week

My sticky paws were into making straws out of big fat slurpy treats

An incredible eight-foot heap

Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tear in a staring under heat

Involved an under usual feat

And I'm not only among, but I invite you all to come

So I missed a million miles of fun

…What more is there to say?

Stay cool, friends. There's still a little summer left.