Richard Stride: August is starting to look tired as summer winds to an end

By the end of August, summer starts looking like a houseguest who has stayed about three days too long.

Back in June, we were delighted to see it. “Summer! Come on in! Stay as long as you like!”

We fired up the barbecue, bought patio furniture, planted flowers and made ambitious plans to spend every possible minute outdoors.

By late August, things have changed. The lawn is brown. The hanging baskets look like they have lost the will to live.

There are three lonely hot dogs left in the freezer from a package purchased sometime around Memorial Day.

And somewhere in the garage is an inflatable pool toy that nobody remembers buying. Summer has become less of a season and more of a cleanup project.

Even the garden seems exhausted. In June, people proudly post pictures of the first zucchini they harvested.

By August, zucchini has become a threat. Neighbors begin leaving them anonymously on porches.

You walk out to get the mail and discover a zucchini the size of a Louisville Slugger leaning against your front door. Nobody admits where it came from. This is how vegetables become organized crime.

Tomatoes aren't much better. If you can grow them that is. For weeks, you wait patiently for the first tomato to ripen. Then, apparently overnight, 47 of them become ripe at exactly the same time. You begin putting tomatoes on everything. Sandwiches. Salads. Eggs.

Eventually, you start considering whether tomatoes might work in breakfast cereal.

Meanwhile, the stores have already moved on. You walk into a store looking for sunscreen and discover that summer has apparently been canceled.

There are pumpkins everywhere. Pumpkin candles. Pumpkin coffee. Pumpkin cookies. Pumpkin hand soap.

And it happens while it is still 85 degrees outside.

Nothing says autumn quite like sweating through your shirt while carrying a decorative scarecrow to your car.

The clothing departments aren't any better. In July, racks were filled with shorts and T-shirts. Now suddenly there are sweaters. Heavy sweaters. Nobody wants to try on a wool sweater when the parking lot asphalt is hot enough to cook an egg.

But retailers don't care. According to the retail calendar, August apparently lasts six minutes.

Then comes Halloween. Christmas will begin sometime around Sept. 8.

Of course, the end of August also means back-to-school season. When I was a kid, those words caused a certain amount of emotional distress. Adults would cheerfully say, “School starts soon!” Children never said that. No child in history has looked at the calendar in late August and shouted, “Only nine more days until algebra!”

There was always the dreaded school shopping trip. New notebooks. New pencils. New clothes. A new lunchbox, maybe. And for reasons I still do not completely understand, a protractor. Every year we bought a protractor.

The funny thing is, I don't remember actually using one. There has to be, somewhere in America there must be a giant warehouse filled with unused protractors purchased by parents since 1957.

Still, there was something exciting about a fresh notebook and a new box of pencils. For about three days.

Then the notebook had somebody's phone number scribbled on the back, the pencils had disappeared and you were asking the kid next to you if you could borrow one. Some things never change.

Adults have our own version of back-to-school season. By late August, vacations are ending, schedules are filling up and people begin saying things like, “Once we get through Labor Day, things should settle down.” This is a lie we tell ourselves every year. Nothing settles down after Labor Day. September leads directly into October. October somehow becomes Thanksgiving.

And then one afternoon you walk into Costco and discover a 12-foot Christmas tree staring at you before you've finished the leftover Halloween candy. So perhaps we shouldn't be in such hurry to rush August out the door.

Yes, the lawn is tired. Yes, the garden has become dangerously productive. Yes, the stores are trying to convince us that winter is imminent. But there are still warm evenings. There are still barbecues.

There is still time to sit outside with something cold to drink and pretend we don't see the first leaf turning yellow. Summer may be looking a little tired.

Come to think of it, so am I. Maybe that's why we get along so well.

Blessings!

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Dr. Richard J. Stride is a CEO of a local behavioral health agency. He can be reached at docrs53@gmail.com. Follow Dr. Stride on Facebook and Instagram.