Summer’s End.
Schools are starting to go back into session but for me, even when I was a student, summer isn’t really over until the end of August. The days are already getting shorter. Just a few weeks ago if I woke up in the dark I could roll over and eventually go back to sleep. Now when I wake in the dark it’s because the alarm has gone off and it’s time to get up. But it still feels like summer, or it did until earlier this week when I went outside and was shocked by how cold it was. Overnight the temperature dropped almost thirty degrees. It climbed back up with the sun but the change was still a reminder that summer is ending.
The trees haven’t started to change yet. They’re still full of bright green leaves. The hickory tree in the front yard is still forming its nuts; it’ll be a while before their deluge drives us nuts. The insects, though, have gotten the message. Even in the morning cold I could hear crickets calling to each other, katydids in the trees, and a few late season cicadas ratcheting away, desperate for one last chance. The end of summer always brings an urgency. Those who sing away most of the season in the dark continue to do so even after dawn; their lives are so compressed an hour must pass like a year.
Once I was lucky enough to start school after Labor Day. It was the start of seventh grade, the start of a new school for me, which was intimidating. I’d gone to the same school from kindergarten through sixth grade and most of my classes were in the same room, or adjacent to each other, and even by second grade I’d gotten to know the layout of the whole school, which was all one level. Seventh grade was a complete change; classes were held in different rooms, on different floors. We were given cards with our teachers’ names and their room numbers and expected to find our way. The first day everybody was allowed some leeway; there was a lot of ducking in and out of wrong rooms and teachers were patient. The second day everything changed. We were all expected to have the schedules and locations of everything down.
In the night between the second and third day a miracle happened: the air conditioning for the entire building broke. An emergency notice went out to parents that summer break would be extended just a little longer. In the end that meant over a week. It was September before we were able to go back in cool comfort, which, I think, meant more to the teachers than it did to any of us. Even though I wasn’t able to go back to the building during that time it did allow me to accept how much things had changed.
The only downside was having to wake up in the dark, but that too would have come no matter what.
Windshield wiper fluid is one of those things I never really appreciate until it’s gone. And then I refill the reservoir under the hood and go back to not appreciating it again. However some critter has chewed through the tubing that goes from the reservoir to the driver’s side sprayer. When I activate the sprayer the wipers wipe but the sprayer only buzzes in vain. This isn’t the first time rodents—maybe squirrels, maybe chipmunks—have done damage to the car because they like the soy-based plastics. A few summers ago I was running an errand when the Check Engine light came on. The wiring for a sensor underneath the car had been completely chewed through. The guy at the repair shop told me it would probably be fine to drive the car without it but eventually it would have to be replaced. With anything automotive I interpret “eventually” to mean “right now”, an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure.
Most libraries don’t date-stamp books at checkout anymore. A lot of libraries have self-checkout systems at the desk so you don’t even have to hand your books over to someone—just enter your card and scan the barcodes on the back of the books. Funny enough an administrator I once worked for used the checkout stamps to prove keeping actual books on shelves was a waste of time, money, and space. He said he’d found a book that hadn’t been checked out in a hundred years. I believed him but I also had a lot of questions. How long had it taken him to find this century-old book? Did he know that people can, and do, consult books in the library without checking them out? Most libraries have a reference section of books that don’t circulate but that’s because they’re so heavily used they have to be available. And did he know that librarians regularly go through the stacks and sometimes remove books they decide are no longer needed?
There’s a new travel trend called “rawdogging”, which has nothing to do with that term’s original slang meaning, “sex without a condom”, but rather taking a flight and not using anything to distract yourself. No phone, no music, not even a book or anything to read other than the flight-tracker and, I guess, if you’re in a window seat, the view of the clouds and sky and maybe even the ground below if it’s visible. Maybe there are travel rawdoggers who eschew even that, preferring to shut the window and sit in their own thoughts. Some won’t even have food or water—and they make a point of doing this on long, international flights of ten or eleven hours.
Every time there’s a new round of Olympic games I remember something very specific from decades ago: I was watching the opening ceremonies, enjoying the parade of athletes from all around the world, when I heard a commentator say, “You know, a lot of the athletes from those small countries don’t have a chance.”