August
The title of this post looks like the name of the month that starts today, but I actually want it to be pronounced “au-GUST,” like, bold or brave.
Which is a good state of mind to be in. Especially on August 1st, which during high school especially was close to my least favorite day of the summer. See, back then, we had about nine weeks off from school — the last week of June, plus all of July and August. In my head I wrote off that last week of June — that’s decompression time, time to screw around, time outside of time that doesn’t count towards the big countdown of DAYS UNTIL SCHOOL. It’s like your birthday, when you can look the other way on having that second plate of dessert or those five extra beers – unlike every other day of the year, when you do those things anyway but it’s not “okay.”
No, August 1st was a world apart from July 31st, even though they couldn’t come closer without intersecting. July 31st was still July, still the first half of the summer, still not June but still not close enough to September to actually have to pay attention to the newspaper every so often, looking up from yet another cherry Italian Ice from the ice cream man that you used to scream about but didn’t anymore, though you still cherished his caring relentlessness of stopping by every day to sell you the cherry ice that you ate much the same way five or ten years before – with an infinity-shaped tongue depressor, with which you scrape off the top layer of ice – but only around the side of the cup, loosening up the inside such that with the right amount of grace, it will love being flipped to reveal the juicy, red underbelly, highly condensed high fructose corn syrup.
I suppose August does mean much the same as it did, actually. The last solid chunk of summer, of baseball before football comes in to claim all weekends; the last solid chunk of time where you can pick up and go to the beach or leave your apartment, succumbing to the cabin fever (which is really just nature calling you back), all without having to worry about layering, fall jackets giving way to winter jackets and scarves
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