Back in the Day: A Tribute to the Midwest Summer

I really appreciate science, it’s unfortunate that it was always so closely correlated with math. I was exceptional at verbal/writing but due to my distaste for math I never really got a chance with science. It’s too bad, I could be writing some superb science fiction instead of this. But science has been fucking with me over the years. I’m sure by now everyone has heard that Pluto is no longer a planet, and some time along the way they pushed the summer solstice up by a day? Was it not June 21^st? Fuck it, I guess it’s today. The longest day of the year (actual day, not just a really epic Friday night) is upon us. Even though most of us have been battling the heat for over a month, and for all intents and purposes summer begins at Memorial Day it’s actually here. For me, I count the passing weeks, months, years, seasons alike. Congratulations, you survived. It may seem unimpressive to stay alive for 3 months and then take a moment to celebrate it, but when you live life as wreckless and care free as us, you should take a moment to pat yourself on the back. And as I watch the sun set from the Venice Pier and I watch a Mexican father and son pack up today’s catch to take the bus east, I can’t help but get a bit emotional as I look back at what summer has meant and will always mean to me. So kick back and take a walk down memory lane with me as I reminisce on my favorite season, summer.

Whether or not you were a genius in school, the general consensus was that when you hopped off the bus for that final time in mid June it was a good thing. No matter what age you were it was off to a better life: baseball practices instead of homework. Backyard barbecues instead of mom’s inferior pot roast. The pool was open, the boats were in the water and people were generally happy. I will always equate my early summers to travel baseball. I spent every waking hour of my day with the same 10 or 11 kids from Skiles Test baseball league in Indianapolis. By day we would go kick the skit out of surrounding small towns like New Palestine and then we would order 12 pizzas to coaches house. The parents would get hammered and the kids would play 3 hours of kick the can. God, wasn’t that the best? You weren’t worried about whether you would close with a chick or be able to get your dick up later that night, the most important thing in the world was beating Matthew to the can.

Of course after a few hours of yard games and pool basketball the baseball dads would realize that it was midnight and they would get in their cars or boats (yah suck it North Shore, how many of your dads boated home after barbecues) and the kids would stay for late night dark tag and of course marathon multiplayer Goldeneye games that would often last until 7 in the morning. We’re still staying up until 7 in the morning, but for much different reasons. I think I’ll always miss these days the most. Not because I was better at hitting homeruns then than I am now (not a softball joke, it’s a sex joke) but because there was nothing better than showing up sweaty as shit bleeding out of the elbow and doing party of 24 dinners at O’Charley’s. No bill split drama, no toiling over what to order (chicken fingers and fries obviously) just good conversation with good friends and that game where you add a gross ingredient to a conconction and pass it to the person to your left and make them take a sip.

As we grew a little older we all started to notice girls. Remember the middle school “parent supervised party” looking back on this, god it was awful. Most of our female counterparts were in awkward phases and had interesting (in a bad way) looking bodies and we mostly hung out on the trampoline drinking soda and eating pizza while Chad conspired to take a girl into the woods and kiss her (and go up her shirt.) We were fearless back then though. Asking a girl or group of girls to flash you? Sober? Get the fuck out of here…that takes balls of steel. I think those 11-13 year old summers were intense. We were learning what it was like to comingle with the opposite sex, but we didn’t really know what we were doing. My roommate posed the question today, do you remember when you first started trying to get laid? No, I don’t. I just remember hanging out in basements in Admiral’s Sound trying to fit in and hanging out in closets making backdoor deals…”ok we’ll say we made out, but don’t tell the guys I let you touch my boobs. Deal.”

Something miraculous happened the summer after 8^th grade. The rebel of the group discovered alcohol and maybe at a bonfire one night he brought a waterbottle of some of his parents’ Skyy and everyone took one sip and for the rest of the night pretended to be belligerent. That’s how everyone was introduced to it, someone had an older brother, and we wanted to be cool. And sometime in that 8^th grade to Sophomore year range every group had very exclusive drinking parties, where everyone drank to get drunk. Sometimes it was during the day if you had a friend with two working parents, score. You wouldn’t do anything, maybe go swimming, maybe play pool…but it was new and exciting. Looking back, we treated it like a closed door drug. And do you remember doing “Hey Mr.” on the way to a party? I’m sure we all got scammed by a homeless man or two, but it was all part of the rush. Then when you showed up to the party there were always a few girls fiending after it like a couple crack heads. Tori will give you a blow job if you give us some vodka (everyone knows someone that either did that or was on the receiving end of it…now you can’t even get a blowjob for 5 tabs of x) This was the first foyer into recklessness.

Some aspects about it were still the same, lake houses, battling two tubes, summer vacations…but instead of quality family time as we grew up it was about how much alcohol were we bringing, where should we throw cigarette butts, which of the couples gets to sleep in the master bedroom. It’s all part of growing up I guess.

By the time we were upperclassmen in high school and entering college, summers lost a bit of their meaning. Sure it was extremely nice out and we got into our fair share of debauchery. We had party buses at Paige’s taking us to multiple nights of Dave Matthews Band at Deer Creek, and who didn’t love getting lost in the back row of the lawn and sucking face with some nameless Freshman. And afterward massive coed sleepovers! But now we had jobs, internships. Getting blacked out on the lake all day meant someone had to bite the bullet and drive back to Feather Cove or at least to the Chinaman at Geist market to restock. Whatever they don’t give DUI’s when it’s light out? So we resorted to start sleeping on the boat, but sleeping on a boat and driving straight to work the next day was often shitty. Thank god for working the late shift at Hillcrest Country Club.

I will always remember all of these memories, all of these people with fondness, whether it be a day at the rope swing, or going white water rafting with my football team and making the idiotic decision to brand myself so I look like a black guy in Omega Psi Phi. The sun is setting on my childhood, for many of you summer’s will soon revolve around your wives and kids as opposed to buying a shit ton of fireworks on July 4^th and blowing stuff up. As with many aspects of life, change isn’t always bad. Things can’t always be the same, but I will say, on this summer solstice, I wouldn’t mind ordering 12 pizzas getting hopped up on caffeine and plugging in the old 64.

Every idiot that grew up in California has “The Endless Summer” movie poster hanging in their room. Like they are trying to make a statement that summer in LA is all about surfing every day. The rich kids in LA don’t even live close to the beach and that movie was shot in Hawaii anyway. I feel like my childhood is more encapsulated by The Sandlot, even though it was shot in Utah and set in the 50’s that’s what it was like growing up in the Midwest.  I personally think that growing up in the Midwest suburbs, (especially Geist) battling 95 degree weather and deadly mosquitos was the greatest place in the world to be in the mid to late 90’s. So raise a caffeine free diet soda to back when we still held on to our innocence, here’s to the memories of a simpler time…now make these next 3 months count.