What are some of your best and worst summer memories?
5It's been too long since we had a "get to know you" topic and the 100+ degree heat outside tells me we’re in the full swing of summer so let’s talk about it!
One of my favorite summers that I’ll never forget was the summer before senior year of high school. I joined a new band with some old friends and we spent every damn day of that summer practicing and playing music, driving around and getting into (totally benign) trouble, playing video games, and performing in shitty little clubs. It was a total blast and the last great “endless summer” moment I can remember before the harsh realities of adulthood smacked me right in the face and took the magic of summer away from me…not that I’m bitter or anything.
The worst summer memory I can think of right now is helping my roommate who I lived with when I first moved here put a “bull bar” on his pickup truck in 105 degree heat and wanting to die. But then I jumped into the pool and everything seemed pretty okay again.
So what about you?
Horrible stories of no air conditioning and awesome stories of lounging all summer at the lake house welcome.
- 19 comments, 22 replies
- Comment
I grew up in Philadelphia, so summers mostly involved going to the playground, the pool, or playing on the local basketball court. It was there that my troubles began. The neighbourhood had long been such a warm, friendly place, but two older kids, their hearts awash in malice, decided to stir unrest in the local children who were merely enjoying a contest of sport. This lead to a physical altercation of which I am not proud. It didn't seem like a significant event at the time, but mother, always prone to overreaction, feared for my safety and told me I was to move in with my extended family across the country. Needless to say this development had me taken aback, so much so that from this point my recollection of the situation becomes disjointed and dreamlike. I remember summoning a taxicab upon reaching my destination to take me to the family home. It was a strange conveyance that seemed more a customised display car than a taxicab, but I thought little of it and decided to continue onward. Clearly the experience had me utterly startled as I recember inexplicably insulting the cabdriver as he rolled away despite his bearing me no ill will. I surveyed the grounds briefly before entering, my mind aflutter with how I might make my mark on this strange and distant land.
@Starblind awesome
@Starblind I never knew you were the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
@Starblind Totally the wrong Will Smith song!
@Starblind neighbourhood? Evidently this was not Philadelphia, PA, but this Philadelphia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Tyne_and_Wear
The best summer that I can remember was the summer of '97. I had broken up with my girlfriend of 4 years in May so it was "The Summer of Josh". I spent more time with my friends that summer than I ever had before. I had a full time job at K-Mart, but I spent every Thursday, Friday and Saturday partying with my friends, going to concerts, and hooking up with girls. I can't even put into words how fun and liberating it was. I was 20 years old (with a fake ID) but we didn't go out to bars much. Just hung at one of my friend's parent's house. They went to Maine every summer and he and his older brother had the place to themselves. Needless to say a lot of shit went down at that house! ;)
My worst summer memory was when I was 11 years old. My parents took us to Disney World and we were staying in a timeshare condo just outside the park. The trip itself was good, but one particular incident will be burned into my brain for the rest of my life. We had spent the day at Magic Kingdom and went to bed late. I woke up to go to the bathroom (I think). I say I think because all I remember after falling asleep was hearing a click. I woke up outside of the condo. At around 4am. In nothing but my tighty-whiteys. And the door was locked. I guess I had sleepwalked and not realized that I had walked out the front door of the condo instead of into the bathroom.
I pounded on the door for what seemed like an eternity. No one answered. The sun was starting to slightly come up and I was getting really nervous, plus I had to pee. I walked around the back of the condo (luckily we were on the first floor unit!) and pounded on the sliding glass door of the living room. No answer. I walked around to the front door and pounded for another 10 minutes until my parents finally woke up and let me in. Needless to say, I was traumatized. The next night my dad put like 3 chairs in front of the door and tied up the door knob with rope in case it happened again. Haha.
Growing up, since I was 2 months old, I spent every summer at a fishing camp/resort in Maine (Alden Camps). My memories are of fishing every day, lobster, waterskiing, swimming, relaxing in a hammock on the porch, and just enjoying life for two weeks every year. No TV, phones (except a pay phone), just living the simple life. All the families would gather in a central dining room for amazing meals (american plan).
Now I need to go back so much children can enjoy the same.
@mfladd that's not too far from where my friend's parents have a cabin. They're on Webber Pond. I went up there one year and we lusted over a couple girls that were staying at a nearby overnight camp. I wonder if it was Alden Camps. Gotta ask my buddy if he remembers the name of the camp they were at.
@jsh139 yup, they are both near Waterville. This was on east pond. A cove over, there was a girls camp where we drive our boats over and check them out (not in a creepy way - we were young)
@mfladd my buddy said the place the girls we were after were at Augusta West Lakeside Resort. It's on Annabessacook Lake.
A few years ago we had a great summer. We are not well off by any means, but we managed to pull off a surprise trip for the boys. They knew that we were taking a road trip from WA to my mom's (she was in Nevada at the time), but what they didn't know what that on the way home we were going to Legoland. My husband had to fly home for work the day before, and I really wish he'd been able to go, but the kids and I had a great time. Plus, I got to do that whole "Surprise, look what you're doing today! " line on them and they freaked. They are the least entitled-acting kids ever, so I'll always remember the looks of sheer joy on their faces.
As far as the worst, I haven't had one that was truly awful, but this year might actually be it. We normally go swimming and camping and to the beach all summer long. But a month ago my 13 year old tried helping a friend at school when he got into an accident. His hand was mangled pretty badly. He had surgery a couple weeks ago and will most likely have another next month. The result is that he can't swim or get it dirty or let it get bumped (no bike riding). That rules out all of our summer activities. So this one, I guess it counts as the bad one.
@jaremelz "I'll always remember the looks of sheer joy on their faces." It does not get any better than that.
@mfladd I have a photo that I took of the exact moment they found out we were going in. The look of shock and joy is the best.
Three summers ago, in Ocean City, NJ, I was body surfing. Same as I had done for the last 40 years. I'm fit, and a good, strong swimmer. Having grown up around the ocean, I respect the ocean -- the ocean is in charge.
It was definitely in charge that day, as a rogue wave got a hold of me, and pile-drove me head-first into the ground. It felt like someone pounded me with a 2x4. Once I got my bearings (still shocked I didn't swallow any water), I got up to find I had a 'stinger' -- where your nervous system is freaking out. My entire body was pins and needles, something akin to hitting your funny bone, but spanning everywhere.
I was medivac'd to the local hospital. Nothing broken (thankfully) but I ruptured three discs (C4-6) and was pretty miserable for the months that followed. I had near constant pain and numbness down my right arm due to the disc impinging on my spinal cord. Nevermind the constant the threat that even a fender-bender could leave me paralyzed if done just right.
A year later I had cervical dissection/fusion on the problem disc. It took almost a year to recover completely, but am pleased to say I had a great surgeon and feel really good most days, with little side effects (sleeping is a bit of an issue due to the limited range of motion in my neck).
So yeah, worst summer ever.
@ACraigL Yes, that would qualify as a truly bad summer. I just had discectomy/fusion of 5-7 4 months ago. I just saw a woman in the store with the brace on and gave her a little smile of solidarity. Which probably just came off as super creepy instead.
@jaremelz Dang. Makes my microdiskectomy fade right out. I only had to wear a surgical corset for a month. In Florida. In summer. All better now, though.
Worse summer ever- working as a Howard Johnson motel maid the summer before college. This was my first introduction to disposable diapers that were not disposed of but just left lying around the room. People trashing the room just because they could. At least I didn't get the room where the guy died in his sleep.
Best summer memory - going camping in a pop-out trailer with my family. There wasn't enough room inside the trailer so I slept in a sleeping bag under one wing while my younger brother slept under the other wing. After everything got quiet I crawled under the trailer and grabbed my brothers foot. He let out a scream and yelled that something had attacked him while I crawled back to my side laughing hysterically. Dad shone a light around and pronounced that whatever it was it was gone. I got caught the next night when I bumped the bottom of the trailer on my way back to my side. Still it was worth it.
Worst summer: The summer before my Freshman year in high school. We had just moved from Montana to Texas (depressing enough) and I had to go to summer band practice in the 100+ degree weather. I knew I was going to die. (I was wrong.)
My husband's worst summer memory would probably involve @joelmw's house, a broken sewage pipe, and the July swelter of Texas.
If there's one thing Texas is good at, it's ruining summer.
@christinewas Texas summers are awesome. Bring on the heat!
Time for getting the family together for BBQ, beer, and music on the patio. Sometimes even the dog will sing along.
@2many2no All excellent summer activities... to enjoy in a cooler, drier place than Texas.
@christinewas But weren't you just "happy to be here!"?
@2many2no There's definitely something wrong with you. All of those activities are ruined by Texas heat.
@joelmw Interestingly, we both remember the sewage visit fondly. He just tries to forget the play-with-poop parts.
When it comes to my worst Texas summer... No. I never managed to be happy to be in Texas until I moved away and always had the shining promise of leaving soon to carry me through. When you know you get to escape the misery, you can fully appreciate the time you are getting with people you love.
@2many2no Echoing @joelmw's assertion that there is something wrong with you, I suspect the dog was never singing, but desperately pleading for someone to get him out of the heat.
@christinewas @joelmw I've lived in cooler climates and enjoyed them a lot less. I know the Gulf Coast is uncomfortable unless you're in the water, and I avoid the Metroplex, but for most of Texas, the 10 months of nice weather is hard to beat.
That being said, if you don't like the heat, Texas may not be the kitchen for you. I know people that hate it whenever it gets above the 70's, but for me, anything under 110 is OK.
OTOH, I've been to Arizona, and there can be too much of a good thing.
Best summer- my dad took me and my brother on a cross country trip- New York to Washington. Mom stayed home with the dog my brother won on Romper Room. We saw all sorts of awesome oddball stuff, walked on the Pacific Ocean beach for the first time, and discovered banana slugs while camping, which my brother was deathly afraid of. We drove in station wagon.
@sammydog01 I loved Romper Room! Never knew you could win an animal, though.
@pitamuffin I think it was through the local affiliate- I remember putting on a dress and going to the station. My brother and I were on TV. It was a dog naming contest and he placed third or fourth. Apparently no one above him wanted a poodle. Great dog.
Best summer? Well, actually most of them. A few stand out, though.
The summer at Camp Bay Breeze, where we got to eat fresh crab and watch the Moon Landing on a B&W portable TV, and when we got busted for stealing canoes and heading for the lighthouse at Cove Point.
The summer I took Microbiology and got to sit around the West Mall eating Vietnamese eggrolls from the street vendors and watching the girls walk around in the Austin summer heat.
The summer at Philmont. If you know, then 'nuff said.
Worst summer? Maybe when I got an unexplained fever after an Army physical at Ft. Leonard Wood, so the doc's decided I had to have a spinal tap, resulting in weeks of headaches and blackouts. But that was also the summer of the Festival of Life on Government Hill below the World's Fair Pavilion where the hippies, yippies, and freaks gathered every day and most of the night for free music and whatever else happened. So, not all the summer was bad.
Or maybe the summer waiting to get drafted and working as a janitor. My job was cleaning the gum and cigarette butts out of the escalators at Northwest Plaza. The "break room" (janitor's closet) was on the back of the Chelsea Street Pub stage, so we would listen to the bands play. You could lean against the wall and feel the drumbeat. It wasn't so bad...
What, wait. There's no bad summers!
Worst summer? The year my husband realized that paying for a shop away from home wasn't cost effective, so he moved everything home. And his asshole brother was his only employee, so I had to deal with him. I lost all of my "me" time that year. It's still gone.
The best?
Worst summer - the summer of breast cancer number 1. Runner up is the summer after chemo for follicular non-hodgkin's lymphoma (nearly killed my bone marrow and had a big mess) plus the remainder of the breast cancer #2 mess (had both cancers in the same year which sort of spread the misery into 2 years and actually 2 summers).
Best summer - all the summers with my cousins at my grandmother's farm in the mountains of western PA. So many blackberry bushes everyone could whatever they wanted daily and "the aunts" still had some left over, stream, pond, 90 acres, shooting off rockets from the car battery, throwing dried cow pies (30 beef cattle there for years), locking someone in the outhouse, camp fires and fireworks on the hill, the neighboring farm with weird stuff like a goat sucking a pig, a zillion dogs and an old farmer with an odd view of life (man did not land on the moon you understand, that was hollywood magic LOL)...Runner up was the portion of the summer at camp in VT. Tied runner up was growing up family camping all over the place in a tent top trailer (well except the long drives) where cool stuff happened like being in the tail end of a hurricane while on the outer banks camping, or the thunderstorm, lightening, double rainbow and sunset all at once while standing on the south rim of the Grand Canyon...
With my kid best summer, farm again and Yellowstone with a friend and her kid. Without my kid working on tall ships (I have a captain's license), in the NYC parade of sail 4th of July for a number of years (working on tall ships). And the summers I worked in the UK and Germany taking kids camping, rock climbing, kayaking, sailing, caving, backpacking, etc. (did it here and Canada too but it was cool there because it was another countries). Oh yeah and Angkor Wat and the Floating Village the summer I adopted my then grade schooler from Cambodia.
When I was younger, I found a case of beer hidden in the bushes on a beach vacation. Parents were super thrilled about that. Sure the kids who hid that beer weren't happy.
My nephew and his family come to visit me at the beach every year. I was sitting on the living room floor with my legs stretched out in front of me and my back against the sofa. My 14 month old godson was sitting on the loveseat with his mother and brother while she read them a story before bed. In the middle of the story, he slid off the loveseat, toddled across the room, climbed up my legs and laid down against my chest. I love that kid.
Worst summer was 2013 after Super Storm Sandy. The entire first floor of that same house was gutted down to the studs and floor joists.
Best summer ever - the summer I turned 11. I spent 6 weeks in Germany visiting family. Spent some of that time with my grandmother who passed away later that year. Part of the trip was spent on Spiekeroog, an island in the North Sea where my uncle lived. A cousin and I took a sleeper train from Munich to get there - she was 14 - and we spent a few weeks roaming the beaches and sand dunes. Beautiful place. No cars are allowed so it's all bicycle and foot power.
Worst summer ever. Breast cancer #2, 2013.
@AnnaB Nice you and I are of the 6% or so that get it on both sides... NOT!
@Kidsandliz lumpectomy the first time. Bilateral mastectomy the second. Sucked unbelievably. Hope you're currently doing well.
Bump
I had a hard time pinning this down, but since @JonT bumped it and it was there staring me in the face, some things surfaced for me. These may or may not be the actual superlatives, but they're good and they came to mind and they're formative.
I think some of my best summer memories were the typical summer trips with my dad. My parents were divorced and mom and my siblings were in Spokane, Washington. Really, we were poorish, but we had a good life with Mom. But a kid needs his Dad too. Dad got us kids for a good chunk of the summer and invariably our time with him included lots of camping, fishing and time in Glacier Park. After Mom died, I spent even more time with Dad and my step-mom at Kintla Lake, this amazing little gem in the upper reaches of Glacier:
We'd also take a few fishing float trips each year down the Bitterroot River, from Lolo to the weigh station halfway into Missoula. But maybe my best memory of floating that river (and I've got plenty) was the time that my two older brothers and I, as young adults (I think I was in my twenties), tried to float from Hamilton. The water was low and, at points treacherous, but we had a cooler and we're bros, so it was fun--and the kind of time I've rarely been able to spend with my brothers, who are seven and eight years older (I'm the baby boy bastard) than I and were out of the house not long after I hit puberty. Not only was the water low, but the wind was against us, so we didn't make it very far and had to have someone come and pick us up well before our intended destination. But, God, it was great.
Among my worst summer memories involve road trips to new homes, homes that maybe worked out okay in the end, but were hell at first:
The trip from Missoula to Springfield, MO and the humidity of the Bible Belt for college. We had everything we owned in a small homemade (not by us, we bought it from a friend) trailer. The land beyond Montana was flat and, to my eye, featureless. My wife was pregnant, so I did all (or practically all) of the driving and almost killed us in my eventual fatigue, because, yaknow, we were poor teenagers, so we couldn't afford to stop for hotels. We finally did give in and get a hotel toward the end, because I simply couldn't go any farther. I remember the feeling of waking up the next morning, slightly refreshed, but still stressed and groggy, the hit to our budget a tangible presence. We got to Springfield and for a month I was sure the humidity would suffocate me. And the heat was a killer. Neither of us could drink the water (I could when it was disguised with Kool Aid). We had no place to stay, but the campus pastor and his wife took us in until we finally rented a mobile home. That pastor is still one of my favorite people, though we've totally lost touched. Fun fact: we met this lady, who's kind of a big deal in Christian music these days, when she was just a feisty little girl (she's the youngest of their three daughters, one of whose bedrooms we totally took over for a week or so).
I would have to say that summer is definitely in my top 5 favorite seasons! But I prefer fall. Better temperatures, beautiful nature, and a great smell in the air :-D
Another worst summer memory was when we moved to Texas. As it turns out we had a bad moving truck, with no horsepower or air conditioning; but we were afraid of the delays and potential costs of getting it replaced (and of transferring all of our stuff from one truck to the other). I was mostly in it by myself the whole trip while the wife and kid drove her car. I was hot and tired most of the trip (though at this point we did have money for a few stops). When we got to Texas, my car (and a bunch of stuff that we'd put in it), was covered in diesel soot from the truck. It wasn't so bad though, and we made it and were greeted by a good friend (and his new wife and son) with whom we stayed for a while.
But the heat. Damn that heat. It was July. My car had no air conditioning and I was under the impression that I needed to wear a suit and tie every day to my new job. And I am not designed for or accustomed to heat. I remember one day early on, after having worked a little late, looking out to the darkness of evening, thinking, "well, at least it'll be cool." Ha. It was not. 80s or 90s or something. It was hot. No place should be that hot in the dark, other than an oven.