Summer Syndromes

Summers' well on its way and I am suffering yet another bout of my summer syndromes. The summer, despite it being associated with smiles and a generally sunny disposition, has always been the worst months for me every year. It's just a matter of too much time and too little things to do, or rather, too little things I could actually do. There's just too much time to think and reflect, which, like summer, had never really been good for me.

Besides, summer is for the kids and not those in post-grad courses and pretending to have extended childhoods. Hence, for oldies like me, summer is for nostalgia, remeniscing and sighing about all those lost days of youth. All is takes is a whiff of that salt-sea air to transport me back to my childhood, seemingly another lifetime ago, when summers were truly for me and I took every advantage of it. The warm sun burning my occasionally pale skin brown, my cousins daring me to do stupid things (and I, an idiot, never failed to entertain them), making up the most surreal stories and seemingly living it. Not even the mall can return that sort of summer magic I had as a child. It all really means nothing now, just two months of dreary loneliness.

Strangely, though, I'm been becoming obscessed about that old anime "Robotech". I remember watching it during the summers on channel 2, although they never really finished the series. So, it took me around five years or so to actually find out how the entire series played out, which is good since I don't think I really appreciated the series back then. I remember watching it and betting on Minmey and Rick ending up together, while my cousin Mark and my brother bet on Lisa and Rick. After five years, I've just found out that I apparently lost that bet. However, I don't really care who ends up with who now. The story is so much more engrossing and complex, with an almost Star Wars-esque quality that all I really care about is finding myself a copy of the show and finishing it properly.

Maybe then, I won't have to feel like a child again to enjoy this summer