Ice cream at noon
Also: defying manufacturer's warnings, hollering at a stranger, and summer bedtimes
Happy summer!
Technically, we’ve been under the management of some peoples’ favorite season for weeks now, but it became official in my book just last week. A friend from California is in town visiting family. She sent me a text on a weekday morning to see if I could meet her and her progeny for a treat that day. We agreed on an ice cream place, and then she asked me if noon worked. NOON for ice cream. This friend can be irritatingly healthy. Clarification: It’s only irritating when a friend (me) is not currently being (let’s be honest: will never be) as healthy as she is.
That I could see her and her kids and witness her feeding her beloved baby birds ICE CREAM for LUNCH made this the easiest affirmative answer I gave all week. She even let them get double scoops. On the chocolate-dipped waffle cones, which would’ve been the ones with sprinkles if they hadn’t been out. Now if this doesn’t scream “summer,” I don’t know what does. Motivated by the gross metabolic injustice which is mid-life, and positively influenced by my healthy friend, I opted for a kiddie cone, enjoying it, my friend, and her even happier than usual kids with every lick.
Another way we know we’re in summer is that on any given July night, and one recent night in particular, my neighbors are lighting their paychecks on fire. In wonderful ways, I felt on the Fourth of July like I was at the epicenter of patriotic celebrations. Perhaps because I was. Fireworks shrieked and cackled and exploded all around my house whilst, after a fun and full day, I chose to wind down in bed before 11:00pm with a Mary Higgins Clark novel and nursing a sore body, cuts on my knuckles, and a 2 ⅝" (I measured) burn on the underside of my left forearm. Specificity matters.
You might wonder if I’ve taken up brawling. I haven’t, yet at least. Some of these “battle injuries of summers” were actually acquired heroically. One, however, was due to a serious lapse in judgement and a blatant violation of the manufacturer’s warning. I can no longer recommend that you use your arm as a hanger over which you drape the T-shirt you find important to steam iron the night before your participation in a Fourth of July parade.
Note: A few mentions in the above paragraphs may cause you to question whether I am in my early 40s or my early 70s. To that, I would just like to say this: Over 4th of July hamburgers, my teenage niece ascribed to her dad the archetype of British author and to me the archetype of “model.” She is officially getting extra for Christmas.
The sore body and injuries to my knuckles—three of them to be exact—were incurred as I participated with less-than-the-requisite-number of volunteers in carrying a ginormous American flag in a parade. Naively and like an absolute glutton for punishment, I positioned myself near the middle of the flag. Turns out that things were hard here. I discovered, approximately four blocks in, that this is where a person has to really work to keep the flag taut. I often needed to tilt aggressively to my right, leveraging my impressive body weight and grasping the flag with both hands to pull it tight. It may not have been meant as a compliment that multiple parade watchers asked in my general direction, “Is it hard?”
This party was repeated for the remainder of the two-mile parade, including after I’d already broken skin on my top knuckles. But there was nothing to be done, other than grimace, reposition my hurting hands yet again, and carry on. Occasionally, I also ineffectively hollered “BLUE SHIRT!!” at the guy in the blue shirt up front to try to get him to come help in the middle. He seemed to be accomplishing exactly nothing where he was stationed and I got the idea he just wanted to be up front. I also got the idea that parade watchers appreciated my ineffective hollering.
Speaking of appreciation: Not to get all sappy, and not to remotely compare myself to those who’ve sacrificed infinitely more for the flag of freedom, but my sixty-three minutes of dumb pain did give me the tiniest taste of what others have suffered for the flag we love. And now I look like J.D. Vance’s daughter whose Presidential Inauguration fashion choice included bandaids on several fingers.
Another recent, and final way I know summer is in full-swing is that it’s getting harder and harder to go to bed at respectable grownup hours. There is not much better in this entire world than warm summer nights. But “respectable grownup hours” are the ones we must respect more often than not if we want to be up early enough to GET TO THE GROWNUP THINGS. Things like exercising before we find new body parts where we uniquely sweat in the summer heat, squeezing in some pickleball, writing important things like essays on summer, and planning an audacious local conference we’re calling the White-collar Watercooler: Real Talk on AI + Work. Just in case you’re wondering about my newfound fame: Yes, I have recently and accidentally gone mini-viral on LinkedIn with my post asking if people would read something if they knew it was written with/by AI.
Recent MTYL columns in case you’ve missed them include:
This one with unpopular thoughts on encouragement. I’m serious: If you know Maureen, could you please ask her about her interest in a patronage situation?
This one about employee personality assessments. I’m an ENFJ and an enneagram 8 and a yellow and I’m sure a bunch of other things, if you must know.
And what I can now declare to be a Part 1 of an eventual 2-part series on hiking in bear country. You may not sit calmly on the seat of an outhouse ever again after reading this.
I’ve got columns about the following important subjects in the queue:
Luck and serendipity, featuring my stolen fortune and a coworker named Loal.
Employee swag. There’s a lot to talk about here.
Embarrassing injuries. This would include, but is not certainly not limited to, things like steam burns from ironing T-shirts.
Scary animals. Have you ever been legit creeped out by your own pet? I have.
As you can see, it’s a riveting summer around here. It’s 8:23pm which means it’s rapidly approaching grownup summer bedtime. But one last quick thing: If you’ve blown-up anything (preferably legally; I feel a little strange about being complicit in anything illegal you’re doing), injured yourself, or similarly wrestled with your desire to stay up late reveling in SUMMER versus sticking to some semblance of grownup-with-plans routine, please send correspondence and tell me all about it.
Isn’t life cool, and aren’t people interesting? See you in the next one…
Oh, summer nights are the best - warm breezes, fireflies, star gazing, live music at a local joint.
I agree. It is so hard to get go to bed reasonably early.