When did you first realize you were not a summer person?
Was it when you were ten, and for some reason the buzzing sound of the cicadas in the pine forest near your home exaggerated the summer heat?
Was it when you were tired out from running around the neighbourhood with friends, taking a washroom break, feeling sticky and getting frustrated when your underwear got all twisted when you pulled them down to pee? And again when you tried to pull them back up?
Was it when you were at the beach with older sisters, trying to eat a raspberry ice cream cone in the wind, the wind that blew sand all around and into your ice cream that now tasted like glass. Was it when you cried and sought shelter under a beach towel, cursing those biting particles?
And your sisters laughed.
Was it when you all arrived home to a depressed Mother who tut-tutted at the sunburn on your peaches and cream skin, then tried to smooth the biting pain by slathering on Noxzema cream.
I miss the smell of Noxzema.
T