The climb to a mountain’s peak begins at its lowest point. Great literature causes you to care about the characters before the story’s climax is reached. Classic music often inspires by building to a crescendo after skillfully adding different elements of the orchestra.
Why is it then, that the official beginning of summer is in the second half of June, on its longest day?
Make no mistake that the festivities and attitude of summer have set in. Here we sit on June first, and I guarantee you not a single kid in any school that observes summer vacation (because it is a holiday) is thinking about anything else but how many more days they have until they get three months of freedom.
Remember your own childhood summers and I’m sure you will fondly recall how the days got longer and longer for the first month. Summer started with your release from captivity and built to a celebration of extended sunlight, warm weather and all around outdoors-y-ness. August was the month when you slowly came down off the euphoric high of July and began purchasing school supplies in perhaps one of the most sobering traditions of our society. Excitement for a new school year, my ass.
Why do we continue to recognize the summer solstice as the first official day of summer? I say we take a stand and change that. Everyone knows that June first is the beginning of summer. Memorial day has passed. We can all wear white again. The weather has become relatively stable. It’s summer already, dammit!
So what if some ancient Greeks studied all this crap hundreds of years ago and deemed it so? We can’t change our minds? It’s similar to the tyranny of Daylight Savings Time, when I lose and hour of sleep every Spring. I don’t care if George Vernon Hudson (its inventor) and Benjamin Franklin (its often mistakenly credited inventor) were geniuses. It doesn’t mean they have all the answers.
You want to know who else was a genius? Ted Kaczynski. That’s right, the Unibomber. We aren’t taking life lessons from some wacko who lived in a run down shack in the woods now are we?
Let’s embrace the true meaning of summer. Let’s live life as it comes. Let’s make decisions with our gut. Gut instinct leaders are people like Captain Kirk, Joe Friday and General Custer. They got results.
On behalf of Transformer Generation Dad, I would like to begin the revolution now and wish you all a Happy Summer. You won’t hear it again from me on June 21st.
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