FIRST PERSON
Time to get your summer hatin’on
STORY / Mike Mulhern ILLUSTRATION / Katerina Hrdlicka
14
There are several reasons why I became a professional columnist. One is my natural ability to put words together in a way that is never awkwardly. Another is the glory. I now walk among the elite in this town. Yes sir, the rest of the peons of Stowe come home from their menial day jobs all exhausted, plop themselves down on their IKEA sofas, then slump over on their sides, positioning their heads to let the recently applied eardrops melt away their wax buildup while trying to watch Seinfeld sideways and not think about their pathetic lives. Not me, baby! For one thing, I prefer Family Guy. Also, I have important things to do after my menial day job. I have to develop my brilliant insights on life into clever articles designed to amuse and delight, and often provoke hate mail. For a writer of my vast skills, penning such profound articles has become a virtual no-brainer. Yup, you don’t need to read much before you see my brain has clearly become removed from the writing process. So there are times when I have to challenge myself, break the monotony of awesomeness. It seems like every year I write something where I whine about winter. But what if I flipped the script? Whined about summer for a change? Summer isn’t all great. I mean, the warm sun bathing your body in an ethereal glow that makes life worth living can kinda suck sometimes too, right? Writing
something like that would be like those debate classes in high school when the teacher makes you argue the other side, like: “The Case For Slavery” or “Yay Hitler!” A summer whine... certainly a daunting task. But if I can pull it off, it would be the single greatest accomplishment of my entire professional writing career. Which is exactly four months old, but whatever. Let the summer hatin’ begin!
Be active or die tryin’! Summer officially lasts for three months. Summer in Vermont lasts about as long as it takes you to finish reading this senten—oh crap, it’s over. By the time the weather actually gets warm in Vermont it’s pretty much time to prepare for winter again. So you have to cram every warm-weather activity in the space of a few frantic weekends. It’s always like: “OK everybody! Time to go hiking/rockclimbing/rockplummeting/mountainbiking/roadbiking/ fatbiking/skinnybiking/ziplining/ alpinesliding/alpinecrashing/swimming/kayaking/eskimorolling/mouth -to-mouthing/winetasting/beertasting/cidertasting/Ben&Jerrytasting/ and throwingupping! Then after lunch...”
The fallacy of laundry People believe that because they wear less clothing in the summer they do less laundry. Totally wrong! In winter you can re-wear clothes all week.