‘Tween Season We’re Always Told Summer Begins On Memorial Day, But Reality Is We’re In Limbo Until School’s Out And Thong Weather’s In

It’s customary to regard the long Memorial Day weekend as the beginning of summer.

But it’s a false start.

Ask any kid who has to be back in class Tuesday morning. It’s not really summer. Not yet.

Summer doesn’t begin until school’s out and the family-vacation season cranks up in earnest.

It doesn’t begin till there’s an uproar over thong swimsuits in Coeur d’Alene and some softball player in Spokane whines that he dropped a pop-up because sweat trickled into his eyes.

It doesn’t begin till some Spokane TV weathercaster describes 94 degrees as a beautiful day.

So how should we refer to this limbo period between Memorial Day and the real thing? It’s not really spring. It’s sure not summer.

Let’s call it spummer.

And because Memorial Day comes early this year, it’s going to be a long one.

(If you are one of the 26 Americans who mark the seasons by the passing of the equinox or the solstice or whatever, that’s fine. Good for you. But please be aware. Those technical mileposts on the calendar have about as much relevance to lifestyle reality as the rules of grammar do to conversational English.)

Spummer is worth noting for the simple reason that identifying a problem is the first step on the road to dealing with it.

And yes, the weeks bridging Memorial Day and real summer are sort of a problem. To put it simply, they are disorienting.

Consider this weekend. It walks like summer. It talks like summer. And then comes Tuesday and the in-your-face reminder that nothing has changed.

So what we have is this wave of cultural allusions to summer - cookouts, Hawaiian shirts and the smell of sunscreen - followed by a return to the extremely nonsummer routine.

It’s enough to make one dizzy.

Even though most adults don’t have all summer off, the season comes with a laid-back mindset all its own. Spummer, on the other hand, comes with a feeling of being slightly off-kilter.

Some smart graduate student in psychology ought to do a research paper on this. Because it’s a sure bet that more than a few people find themselves subconsciously groping for a reliable frame of reference at this time of year.

Should you completely switch over to short-sleeves? Is it time to start boring your co-workers with exhaustively detailed descriptions of your travel plans?

These and other questions haunt us as we straddle the shifting fault lines of the seasons.

Let’s try to think of this in terms of baseball.

Think of Memorial Day as first base. Now think of summer as second base. The question becomes this: How much of a lead-off can you take without getting picked off by back-to-back work/school reality?

You know that odd sensation when you wake up and you’re not exactly sure what day it is? Well, imagine feeling like that for, say, three weeks.

Actually, you don’t have to rely on your imagination. You’ve been there.

Of course, in-between seasons don’t get a lot of respect. There will never be a play called “The Long, Hot Spummer” or a movie titled “Spummer of ‘42.”

There won’t be an album called “Endless Spummer.” There won’t be songs titled “Spummer in the City,” “Boys of Spummer,” “Spummer Place” or “Spummer Breeze.”

No one has ever been urged to roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of spummer.

Nobody has ever lamented that there ain’t no cure for the spummertime blues.

There are no dog days of spummer.

Frank Sinatra never recorded “Spummer Wind.”

Alice Cooper never suggested “School’s out for spummer” - because, of course, it’s not.

The Beach Boys never sang “T-shirts, cut-offs and a pair of thongs…we’ve been having fun all spummer long.”

Shakespeare never wrote of the winter of our discontent being made “glorious spummer.”

No matter. Being overlooked doesn’t mean this mini-season isn’t real.

So enjoy this weekend. Feel free to happily anticipate summer. Just remember. It’s not here yet.

And if you feel a little confused in the days to come, don’t worry. That’s normal.

It’s spummertime and the livin’s uneasy.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn