Beloved's Summer Epistle

Dear summer,

I am disgusted by your very presence.  You are not worthy of me writing this but I'm gonna do it anyway.  Kiss my arse, with your tongue out.  Ok, so here's how it works.  I will try my best to convey my disdain with this summer.  I must have been having a predictive moment towards the end of spring because I had been expressing my unrelenting desire to skip directly from spring to fall.  Let's examine these seasons, briefly.

Spring: The season of rebirth, all things are made new, the great renaissance, when the dead things in nature begin to have life again.  The weather begins to warm, but it is at a bearable rate.  I think here, we are more susceptible to tornadoes during this period (remind me to tell you about the great tornaduh--pronounced tore-nay-duh--of the halfway school).  However I find that to be a reasonable sacrifice to spring's dreadful replacement.

Fall: Football, the Fall Classic (aka the World Series), the beginning of the NBA season, Halloween (ok scratch that one).  All of these are prominent during the fall months, and I could not be more ecstatic.  There is also a mystique associated with Fall that I just love.  That mystique is likely due to it swiftly coming to uproot its predecessor.  I think that is the most gracious thing that good old autumn could do for us.  Do we say thank you?  No, we do not.  Ungrateful Americans.

Winter: In the words of the great, ever-philosophical Gucci Mane, "Burr".  Winter is interesting because it offers something that we often reject as fact, even though we should all know better.  It is the quintessential season of perpetual romantic hope, aka "cuffing season".  Noah would be proud because I'm almost certain everyone in the world gets paired off, in anticipation of the cool temperatures.  Who doesn't like to cuddle in the cold, confuse what they like about a given situation, and then regret talking to their short-lived better half, all by the time Spring rolls back around?  Cuff away.

Either you're really dumb, or you may notice that I skipped a season.  I wish I could say that I was saving the best for last, but the fact is, I don't wish that at all.  Ah summer...you, my foe, are HOT AS BALLS!  You are hot as vaginal penetration betwixt victims with assorted STD's.  You are hot as sodomy, which when passed around and coupled with the theory of the plagued monkeys, create what I like to call "Magic Johnson Disease".  For the first time in my entire life, I know what it feels like to have one bad memory of a particular thing, and eventually have that coupled with traumatic emotional events, to harbor a unique vacuum of feelings causing psychological disparagement.  Sodomy, by the way...well just look it up.

Bad memory: I never would have believed that it was possible, being that my brain is 79% comprised of baseball adages and thoughts.  I really cannot stand, nor can I function in, the heat for an extended period of time.  20 years in the sun, never getting sunburn, never being dehydrated, never seeing a single mirage, and this summer I sustained a freakin' HEAT RASH.  If you know anything about heat rash, it is essentially a condition comprised of bodily fungus (urgh), prominently activated in extreme heat and dampness.  Well when I get hot, I sweat.  I guess that's a double-whammy.  When I tell you that ish itched, when I tell you that ish was ugly, when I tell you that ish would not go away, you better believe it.  Now my body is all different skin tones.  I look like Michael going through "The (other) Change". Stay out of the Texas heat.  You have been warned.

Traumatic Emotional Event I: So by now, most people that know me in some capacity know about poor little Kayla Brown, the soon to be 1st grader, who was hit by a car while riding her bike.  She was 6.  How do you rationalize that your 6-year-old will never smile again?  All it makes me think about is my soon to be 6-year-old sister, who ironically, I just kicked out of the room for not knowing how to follow instructions.  Dang, I'm gonna invite her back.  Slight digression, we have and raise these kids, and blame them for stuff that ultimately is not all that much of their faults.  Their brains are still developing.  Ours are finished with the developmental process, yet we're still foolish.  Stupid know-it-alls.  So my sister was sitting at my grandparents' house this evening and decided to go find our mom, who was outside.  "Oh my goodness, I have to go see my mom!"So I told her to get her shoes and she could go out.  She searched long and hard, long enough for a redneck to wash his hands in the woods.  Then she comes back.  "I can't find my shoes, I have to find my shoes, where are they?", to which a family friend replies, "Go ask your mom where they are."  Umm ma'am, her mom is the reason she wants the dang shoes.  See the contradiction we put in these kids' heads?  Unfortunate.  Little Kayla was in my sister, Luby's, class, so mostly my heart just went out to her, but knowing a little about Kayla was really all it took to put me in a funk.

Traumatic Emotional Event II, Mid-Summer Nightmare: An ugly sequel.  Again, if you know me, you know that I somehow got trapped into every facet of my life being seamlessly woven into a quilt revolving around kids.  I won't say they are the best birth control because that's technically abstinence, but they're a close second.  Wait...that's condoms.  Ok they're third for sure.  So even though I didn't know a thing about soccer this time last year, I started coaching 4-year-olds because my sister's team needed a coach and, well let's just say I was a last resort.  Two seasons later, I am becoming less ignorant of a sport that is quite a bit more interesting than its 2-1 scores would indicate.  I had this kid in my second season, who has since moved on to Rowlett, or Rockwall, or some place really far that begins with "R".  I'm going to miss him and his spirited personality.  Well today, I was informed that I should be in prayer for him because on yesterday he witnessed his dad drown in a lake in Oklahoma.  I have this hierarchy of most awful deaths to cope with, which I always begin with burning. It just seems so torturous.  Somewhere, not far behind would be drowning.  It's such the freak accident that I just can't imagine.  As devastated as I know the family is, I am feeling similarly.  I knew his dad, as he was an avid attendant of our games.  He wasn't that guy that you would say was not, at the very least, trying hard to be there for his son.  The poor kid is too young to understand drowning, so as of this morning he still had no idea that his dad was dead.  Now, anybody care to tell me how do you tell a 5-year-old his dad died, and you actually witnessed it happening?  Murdered, figuratively, by Poseidon, while his young child is left to watch, unable to offer any assistance.  I'm not gonna harp on this because I've already exceeded my crying limit for the day and Summer (curse), but we just take so many things for granted that it's crazy.  Now, I'm gonna need strength because I feel it my duty to actively step in and take some of the stress away from those most affected.  Wish me luck.

I think I'm actually ready to get back to school, get back to the impressionable minds, the crazy kids, the NORMALCY.  I think things may loosen up once that happens.  Naturally, since all of these things have happened this summer, I am now adamant about being unable to wait until this calendar changes to the first day of fall, which is far too distant from this very day.  Though my heat rash (bad memory) has subsided, there are still visual reminders.  Even if there weren't, I'd still be miserable.  I was telling a friend earlier that I absolutely cannot take anymore heartache, for an indefinite period.  If it happens, I honestly don't know what I will do.  Yall just pray for me.  Now I'll have to come up with some sort of tribute and plan of action.  RIP Calvin Straughter.  Love you, Evan.  I'm always here fore you.

Beloved