I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a small town propitiously located right in the middle of the state. If I turn left out of my driveway, it’s a two-hour drive to the beach; turn right, and in no time at all I’m in the mountains. Now that summer’s here I consider going left. I can almost feel the sand in my bed, the melanoma-rich sunburn on my shoulders, the lingering hello of a Portuguese man-of-war. But in case I go right and to the mountains, I’ve already purchased special tweezers, the kind that can extract both kinds of ticks, the really small ticks that can kill you and the slightly larger ones that only make you wish you were dead. Maybe I’ll camp out, or, alternatively, maybe I’ll superglue my tongue to the roof of my mouth. Both seem equally fun to me. But where was I? Oh, yes: Summer’s here!

It’s not that I don’t like summer. I like summer as much as I like the other three seasons. It’s the expectations that come with summer—expectations like going outside—that I rail against, and have railed against, all of my life. I rail successfully now, as an adult. But as a child I was powerless and at the whim of every adult with good intentions, my mother in particular. My Alabama summers were spent outdoors.

Go play! my mother said, as if that were a good thing. She literally had to push me outside. It’s a beautiful day. Too pretty to stay inside. Go play with somebody.

I would turn to her, pleading, but already the door was closed and locked; I would have to fall on a rusty nail to get her to open it again before lunchtime. It was 9:00 a.m., and already the air was heavy and thick as wet paint. Mosquitoes found me immediately and sang their song so that other mosquitoes might hear. White-winged insects flew into my hair, my ears, my mouth. I searched for somebody with whom I could play, somebody who was inside watching I Dream of Jeannie or Bewitched (how I loved those women when I was twelve years old!), but nobody was. Everyone was at Cub Scouts or Bible camp. I was on my own beneath the malicious sun.