Remember when you were in high school and the summer was just... EVERYTHING? There was nothing you'd look forward to more than three months of no school and all friends and hanging out. You'd think about it the whole year, especially when spring rolled around; who you'd hang out with, what you'd do, how this would be THE summer. And sometimes it would be. Here are some summer memories for you from my head.

-The summer that I met Ben Ivanson and spent my nights with him, Kristee and a few choice others drinking and having bonfires. He used to call my dog Sprinkles even though his name was Reggie. There was that one time when we were being too loud in my yard and woke up my dad and he got straight up pissed off so we all went away and I didn't come back for like 4 days.

-Sitting in the front seat of a pick-up truck, three across: Abe driving, me in the middle, Bob on the right. We talked in that truck about how awesome everything would be and how it would be that way all summer. Come to think of it, I think we just drove around a lot and never really did any of the stuff we said we'd do... just sat in the truck and talked. I'm pretty sure that was the point.

-That one summer I tried so hard to be a pot head and smoked marijuana multiple times a day and never fucking got high except for that one time where afterward I ate a whole carrot cake.

-I can picture clearly how my mom looked sitting across the fire from me, drinking a hard apple cider. She'd have her legs up on the lawn chair next to her, slightly reclined, eyes downcast at the flames, bottle poised near her
mouth for long stretches of time before she'd actually take a sip.

-Even if it was chilly out at night, the big flat rock in the back yard would be warm and toasty to sit on after being in the sun all day. Wisteria used to grow intermingled with the lilacs over it and I'd lay underneath it for hours just breathing or writing or singing to myself.

-Sitting with April in the field up the road, learning constellations from her and cuddling because the grass was damp and it made us cold but we didn't want to go inside.

-That time Brooks and I spent the whole night in his car in the parking lot up the street, talking and smoking cigarettes. I had to pee but didn't want to go to my house for fear of waking up my dad, so I peed under a pine tree with low branches.

-Cutting across backyards with Andy and April to get from one of their houses to the other undetected by parents. That time he pretended her boobs were Nintendo. Sitting in his living room for hours, watching him play Metal Gear Solid. April and I would, years later, find a sweatshirt of Andy's that still smelled like him and declare that it smelled like Rammstein, pizza rolls, and Duke Nuke 'Em.

So where are they now?
-Ben is somewhere I don't know about.
-My old pot-dealer got arrested about a year ago.
-My mom live in Connecticut, and I don't know when the last time I looked at her across a fire was.
-The big rock is still there, but the lilacs evenutually got choked by the wisteria which got throttled by the cudsu.
-April is a grad student at Worcester Poly-Technical institute and never calls when she's back in town.
-I'm pretty sure Brooks got beat up and then went into the army.
-Andy lives in Farmington, ME and also never calls when he's back in town.