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“It’s finally summer!” most normies exclaim. But I’m not most normies. Your love of summer is woefully misguided and motivated by fear. I’m here to take down summer. This could be my hottest take ever (pun very much intended,) but summer is actually the worst.*

*Full disclosure: I live in Los Angeles, and there are no seasons. But I did grow up in Pennsylvania and went to school in D.C., so I have seasonal experience. I miss fall most of all.

Summer is the sweatiest season.

This is just a fact. Potential TMI alert, but I sweat too much in any climate. It’s a genetic trait, so I know I’m not alone. At any temperature, I’m too hot. I travel with baby powder for my armpits and translucent powder for my forehead, and I always consider a dress or shirt’s color based on how I will sweat through it before I buy it.

In the summer, temperatures are at an all-time high, all the time. This means I’m sweating, all the time, nonstop. At least in winter, there is the hope that the cold will hinder my sweat glands. In summer, there’s no escape, not even mentally.

Summer is a dead zone for sports.

At the beginning of summer, there are the NBA and NHL finals. Also some tennis here and there and the steady trickle of baseball. That’s it. Tennis and baseball. This isn’t a dig at either sport. Baseball games are fun as hell, and I like watching Wimbledon as much as the next suburban expat. I’m more lamenting the fact that summer has basically nothing, and fall has baseball, hockey, basketball, AND football. And the U.S. Open is at the beginning of fall! Even spring has college basketball. Literally, any time of the year is better for sports than summer.

Depending on what part of the country you live in, it lasts all of two months.

In colder climates, do people even count June and August as summer months? The weather is still pretty fickle at the beginning and end of summer. So it shouldn’t even count as a season.

Summer is bug season.

Spring is when every animal and insect decides to brave the outdoors after being away all winter. Summer is when they’ve gotten comfortable and set up shop in the open air. Mosquitoes are too comfortable with humans and just eat us alive. This is actively one of the worst parts of the summer months.

Summer is always a letdown.

 

Summer gets so much hype. Winter becomes unbearable, so people just count down the days until they can feel warmth again. I get it, winter can be brutal. But you know what else is brutal? Summer! Heat! Sweating through your shorts on Fourth of July and having to borrow a pair of your best friend’s shorts! Sunburns!

I love being outside. Do you know what I hate? When it’s too hot to be outside. When you can’t hike, unless it’s 5 A.M. because it’s so ungodly hot. Summer is bad and never what it should be.

OK, fine. I’ll make a few concessions.

Summer fruits and vegetables are the best. Corn on the cob rules. Summer movie season is the best. Fourth of July and Labor Day are both pretty solid holidays. Going to the beach is extremely fun. Summer cocktails are delicious.

But do these all outweigh the cost of summer? I think not. Wake up, sheeple! Summer straight up sucks.

Erin Vail

Erin is the 2003 West Reading Elementary Geography Bee champion, a TV obsessive, and never not thinking about Buffalo sports.

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