Cruel Summer

I hate summer. I’ll never understand how everyone gets all sad as September approaches (just watch TV newscasters over Labor Day weekend blubbering about summer being over like Al Qaeda just kidnapped their newborn). I can’t wait for the humidity and stink to get the hell out of here. I don't know what everyone's crying about–NYC stays hot until October, this isn't the Arctic.

Really, unless you’re unemployed, a student, a teacher or very wealthy, I don’t see how summer benefits you in any way. I know I complain about this is some fashion every freaking year, but I can’t ignore all the references in magazines about how The City is so empty in the summer, how everyone’s out of town (of course, now I can’t find the slew of references that I know full well I’ve seen). Yeah, my subway this morning was sparse as far as rush hour commutes go. But why? Do people really get months of free time off?

I guess if 8 million people all get the minimum ten days off a year, a good number of them will use these ten days during the summer (I wouldn’t have, but I had no choice this year) and if you take summer to mean Memorial Day through Labor Day (which you know pisses me off because summer goes all the way through most of Sept. Fall is fun, fall is new beginings, back-to-school, light sweaters, not sweating. Good things brew in autumn. I just decided I’m going to have an end of summer to replace the birthday party that I didn’t end up throwing. The weather will be better. I can make seasonal snacks using still good tomatoes, and fall-like figs, squash and pears. It’ll be great. Sept. 22—mark it on your calendars) which is around 15 weeks. If I’m vaguely correct (my math skills are weak at best) that would mean about 533,000 citizens would be on vacation on any given week during summer. That’s like the entire population of Portland, OR (which I only use as a reference point because it’s familiar enough for me to wrap my head around).

But I don’t think that’s what writers are referring to in their trend pieces. They’re talking about the whole summering concept and that’s what baffles me, especially since in the past week I’ve noticed many media mentions citing the 33% of Americans don’t use all of their vacation days statistic (from an Expedia/Harris Interactive survey). But then, New York is barely America (I don't mean that in a good way).