What I Did This Summer

I remember going back to school a decade ago. Teachers always asked, "What did you do over the summer?" and minutes later we'd all be writing paragraphs about our summer vacations — our 11-year-old bodies squirming at our desks, itching for more summer days. We never wanted summer to end. School sucked.

But I was always a nerd. I thrived on school, constantly having something to do, seeing my friends, sharpening pencils. I even liked looking at and poking the globby, unrecognizable "food" we were fed for lunch. My mom worked as a lunch lady for a few years, so I was the lucky kid who got extra mashed potatoes to play with.

Years later, teachers continued to ask us what we did with our Junes, Julys, and Augusts. We still had to write about it, but this time more elaborated and in other languages ("Pendant l'étè, je dormais beaucoup...").

Now we're adults and no one — except for the random acquaintances who have no other means of making conversation when we awkwardly run into each other — asks us what we did over the summer. Perhaps nobody cares. Or maybe no one wants to admit "absolutely nothing," or "gained 25 pounds," or "worked at Starbucks." Either way, summer has become a last-resort topic; it's a quarter-of-a-year void that everyone assumes is typical. No one does anything cool anymore!

I for one am guilty of that crime. This summer I interned. It was repulsively dull. I took a magazine writing class. It was also dull, painful to sit through after a day of being at my boss's beck and call. I went on two weekend-long "vacations": the first to Atlantic City, where I lost $5 at the slots and vowed to never gamble again in my life, and the second to Vermont, where I petted sheep and tried to catch chickens. I got stuck in traffic, watched Toy Story 3 (who didn't?) and shook my fists at the gods for cursing New York City with its worst heat wave since 1999.

But still, regardless of the daily commute into the city and running out of money on the single day I wanted to buy just one Crumbs cupcake, I had fun. The summer of 2010 was a good one. Now we're all back to school and aching for someone to care about what we've done for the past three months. So when you bump into that semi-familiar person from your poli-sci, chem, or econ class, ask about his or her summer. And actually listen.