With the summer season quickly approaching and the heat and humidity of late spring forecasting that this year’s summer is going to be a scorcher, I thought it would be timely to devote my column today to the season of summer and all of its likes and dislikes. For better or worse, the season of summer is arguably the most popular and anticipated season of the year.
Personally, for various reasons, summertime is my least preferred favorite season of the year. However, as true as that might be for me, I think that for the majority of people, summertime is their most desired and anticipated time of the year in spite of the fact that the most celebrated holiday of the year is in winter.
Things People Love About Summer
In my estimation, at the very top of why summer is perhaps the most anticipated season of the year is the fact that children do not have to attend school for at least two months. This is true for both college students, as well as preschoolers through twelfth graders. This summer break is something both students and parents look forward to.
For students, it gives them some rest and relaxation (R and R) time from the rigorous schedule of going to school, study time, and all the other demands and responsibilities of the school year.
For the parents, it releases them from all the duties of having to either prepare their children for school, as well as taking them to school or getting them ready for bus pick-up. It also frees them from having to support PTA meetings, sporting events (for those who have children on the band or one of the teams), and other extracurricular activities.
The summer is also a time when most people or families go on trips or outings to theme parks, natural reserve parks, and visits to historic places, as well as the opportune time to pop in on relatives and friends who live out of town.
Then it is the ideal time for special events like family or class reunions. Most reunions that I know of have always taken place in the summer.
For lawn and garden enthusiasts, summer is the perfect time to pamper and manicure their lawn, flower bed, and shrubbery.
Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb, nor care much about maintaining my lawn. I am rescued from being given the worse yard on the street award by the mercy of a few of my deacons who have taken it on themselves to cut my grass. There are a few other things about summertime that make it the preferred season of the year for so many people that I do not have the space to include in this column today. However, if summer is your favorite season, do take full advantage of it. Right here, I want to present to you the other side of the equation.
What Others and I Hate About Summertime
Invariably, the thing that most dislike, who regret the arrival of summer, is the heat and humidity factor.
The South is infamous for its scorching heat, muggy, and humid weather during the summertime.
The months of July and August are rightly called the “dog days of summer” because of the extreme heat and humidity that makes the weather uncomfortable and at times almost unbearable.
This is certainly true for those who work outdoors like I once did when I worked on my father’s crew of bricklayers from my early teens until my early thirties.
Summertime was the most unpleasant and challenging season for both the bricklayers and laborers.
It was not only the time of enduring the heat and humidity, but an imaginary creature called the “monkey” was always on the prowl for its next victim. Any of you who have ever worked outside in the tobacco field, cucumber field, or any type of outside work during the summertime know full well what I am talking about.
Then there is the vermin effect that causes the arrival of summer to open up a Pandora’s Box full of pesky mosquitoes, gnats, flies, lizards, snakes, and other undesirables.
The very thought of these pests make me wish futilely against the natural order that summer, with all of its heat, humidity, and varmints, was not one of the four seasons, especially in our locale.
Summertime, with its heat and humidity, is also an adversarial season for people with conditions like asthma, emphysema, tuberculosis, and other respiratory diseases. Life for many of them during this time of the year can be quite unpleasant and difficult.
There are, of course, other undesirable and detestable things about summertime that space will not allow me to include in this commentary. Now whether you are a lover of summertime or one who dislikes it like me, will not affect nor alter its arrival with all of its heat and humidity one iota.
I wholeheartedly agree with something that my follow columnist, Carley Wiggins, said recently in his piece on climate change. At the end of the day, God is the One, the only One,
Who controls and determines the weather patterns, whether they are good or bad.
In light of this, I will close my column today with a saying that was a favorite of one of my high school teachers and mentors by the name of Lucille Cheeks Belin.
When others and I would seek counsel and advice from her about certain issues that we were contending with without any solution or change in sight, invariable she would say in her articulate and to the point way of expressing herself, “Just accept and adjust.”
I took her advice back then in regard to certain issues of life that were beyond my power to stop or change.
I will certainly take it now in regard to the heat and humidity of summer and all of the other undesirables and evils it unleashes with its arrival.
I have learned and am still learning to accept and adjust.
