That Summer

I remember that summer...

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I went for a bike ride this morning.  Don't laugh.  I'm never going to a "bike guy."  You know the spandex -wearing, pad your crotch, shoes strapped to the pedals, billy-bad-butt that has a storage rack for his water bottle and a special section of his closet for bike clothes guy.  I'm not going to be the guy that holds up traffic so I can ride my big -boy bike in the road with all of the cars.  It's just not going to happen.

I actually liked the ride, though.  It was calm and refreshing in a way I don't usually experience.  Feeling the sun warming me, and the wind blowing against me was a great experience. But, the thing that really got me, were the smells.


It smells like summer.  I can't really put my finger on it.  It's freshly cut grass.  It's lawn sprinklers.  It's open garages and day old barbecue grills.  It's the smell of the humid morning air.  It just smells like... summer.

I coasted down a hill, closed my eyes, and let the air fill me.  It took me back to when I was twelve.  It took me back to when summer was not just special, it was essential.  It took me back to that summer.  It was my summer.   It was a simpler time right before we moved to Texas, and all was right in my world.

That summer was a time of independence.  It was a time of simplicity and innocence.  I had my brother and my friends and we lived it up.  I was too old to need a babysitter, but too young to care if girls knew how sweaty I got.  Sleepovers were the currency of friendship, and video games were life.  The cooler your bike was, the cooler you were.  The biggest things on my agenda were how many firecrackers to get for the 4th of July, and the next Nintendo game to rent.  It was a time where it mattered how many baseball cards a guy had, and saying cuss words made you feel a little taller.  Going to the movies without your mom was about the best thing ever. And when you got hurt, it was still okay to cry.


It was definitely that summer.  Eighteen years later, I'm still thinking about it.  I'm still hanging on to a piece of it.  It's still there.  Because, for a part of me, that will always be summer.  It will always be that summer.