Sunday Newscape Magazine

As far as I know, I entered the real world in seventh grade. I know this because I can still hear my sixth-grade teacher issuing a dire warning at the end of the school year: “Boys and girls,” she croaked (at least it sounded like a croak to my irreverent 12-year-old ears), “you’d better straighten yourselves up right now. Next year, you’re going to be in the real world.”

I remember snickering and scoffing at this admonition with my friends, all of us trying to pretend we were too cool to be afraid of the junior-high version of the real world - a world of swirlies and wedgies and being stuffed into lockers. Or so we thought.

I realize now that my teacher was probably telling us it was time to get serious about learning, but the poor lady was wasting her breath. Learning was pretty low on our pubescent totem poles.

The real-world threat, though, would be issued to us time and again: before high school and before college, and, of course, at our college graduations, when we were eager to get out into that real world and fix the mess that idiotic earlier generations had made of things. Or so we thought.

Now, though - as a member of a middle-aged generation that has actually made even more of a mess of things out here in the real world – I live for days when I can at least feel like I’ve had a reprieve from reality. That’s why I love summer. Summer is life’s sixth-grade, a glorious, innocent phase when we can pretend we’re not in the real world. Summer is recess for adults.

And that’s why I’m always grumpy this time of year. Because it’s past Labor Day, and even though summer may not officially be over on the calendar, it is most definitely over. Fat-lady-is-singing over. Even-Yogi-Berra-says-it’s-over over. It’s back to the grind. Back to the routine. No more wearing “business” shorts to work or rationalizing a day of playing hooky (It’s summer, for Pete’s sake!). No more long, languid, by-the-pool vacations or even those shorter, trendier “staycations.” No more letting the kids stay up half the night and eat ice cream for dinner.

I complained about the sudden end of the sunshine season to a friend of mine as if it had happened unexpectedly.

“Summer just started and now it’s over,” I moaned. My friend shocked me by spouting anti-summer sacrilege.

“Actually,” she said, “I hate summer. I can’t wait for it to end.”

She rattled off some of summer’s unpleasant side effects: the exhausting ordeal of planning and preparing for a vacation, the tyranny of having to look trim and toned in a bathing suit; the need for pedicures and tanning. Not to mention the stress of having to keep the kids entertained.

“And worst of all,” she said. “You have to shave every day. It’s way too much work.”

And then she uttered the phrase that got me thinking about my sixth-grade teacher.

“I always look forward to getting back to the real world.”

She’s a strange woman. I’m not sure why we’re friends. But she did make me feel better about summer’s passing. And, come to think of it, she does have a point. In the real, workaday world, you can hide that extra 10 (or 20) pounds behind more clothing. And if you are a woman who gets too busy to shave for a few days, no one is the wiser. In the real world, you can comfortably be both heavier and hairier. There’s certainly something to be said for that.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. Until the weather turns cold, and the grass turns brown. So long summer.

© Jackie Papandrew 2008, All Rights Reserved www.jackiepapandrew.com