After a largely sleepless night, spent trying in vain to get comfortable in the convection oven that is my upstairs bedroom, I have come to a startling realization: I don't actually like summer very much.
I know, someone will invariably say that I will be dreaming of the summer heat come winter, when everything is cold and frosty again. That's actually not true though, because I don't pine for the opposite of whatever weather it happens to be. The ideal season is spring, because it has reasonable temperatures, lots of flowers, and the odd bit of light rain for texture. It even smells nice. It's nice, it's a pleasant few months in between the deep freeze of winter and the scorching heat of the summer months.
Summer, however, is the worst season. There's often no escape from the heat. In winter, most buildings are heated, plus we can wear sweaters, which are among my favorite garments. In summer, if you don't have air conditioning, you have no respite. There are only so many layers that can be shed, even fewer if you want to go out in public. It is just heat, a heat that is difficult to impossible to actually escape. Homes are hot, the outdoors are hot, the car is even hotter than both of those, since it's a more confined space. Everything is hot, I find I don't actually enjoy that very much.
We have been tricked into liking summer, conditioned from our school age, because summer means no school. Everything is better when we don't have to worry about teachers, homework, or getting up in the morning. We associate the season with good times, because that's when we were able to go on vacations, have fun, and have leisure time. That association continues into adulthood, because many of us go on to have kids, and it makes the most sense to go on vacation when they are free anyway. So summer continues to be a season of leisure, it's a time where it's easiest to escape work and do the things we want to do, and would do more if we weren't forced into going into the office all the time.
This isn't to say that there's nothing good about summer. If you like swimming it's great, though part of that is because swimming happens to be one of the few ways to escape that all consuming heat. Also, lots of festivals happen in the season, because everybody is out and willing to take time off to attend. Then again, those festivals would probably work just as well in the spring or fall if those were the main vacation months. I also enjoy the longer days, because something can get accomplished in the evenings, and one uses less power on lights.
Every season has its ups and downs, summer just happens to have the most obnoxious down of all of them. It's rare that you will have someone who admits that summer actually is not very fun at all. Personally, I don't have kids, I don't vacation in July and I haven't been in school in years. So that positive association with the summer has steadily eroded. Instead, I associate it with heat, an all consuming and enveloping heat that is oppressive and robs me of a good night's sleep. I connect it with getting into my car after a long day and needing to put the air conditioner at full tilt, just to make the drive home. It's sweaty, dirty and doesn't even smell nice. Summer is the worst season, I am eagerly anticipate everything cooling off in fall.
