I hate August.
Every year, it slithers in like a disease-carrying slug, leaving a sneaking slimy trail of sweat, sorrow, sadness, stink, suppuration and suffering that no amount of scrubbing and sanitizer can sluice away.
As I always must note, I do not hate my friend August, a true brother in Christ and one of my ride-or-die chosen family. Indeed, thankfully he was born in July, as was my bride, although she almost was an August baby. While that might not have prevented me from marrying her, it might have slowed the process, had she been born in August.
There are a few good things in August – the kids go back to school, allowing parents a moment to breathe. Then there’s the Perseid meteor shower. Then there’s –
No. Wait. That’s it.
I loathe August.
August is the February equivalent of summer, except instead of half-frozen muddy misery, August is half-flooded muddy misery that takes flight on wings of mosquitoes the size of songbirds, with horseflies the size of small dogs flying low-level ground support. While I normally like mud, the mud stinks in August, like unforgiven sin marinated in week-old fish and forgotten eggs.
One cannot hunt anything but hogs and coyotes in August, and neither is worth the price of a bullet. The fish are sensibly staying deep and cool, and unwilling to take the most tantalizing bait. The water in my favorite swimming holes is only slightly cooler than a tepid bath that really does nothing to ease the ache of my joints or wash away the dirt and grime that have become ingrained due to the spiritual intemperance that embodies August in all its nasty glory.
I despise August.
August is the boorish, boring, bombastic self-proclaimed expert in all things who dominates every conversation in a restaurant, eliciting glares from the true experts who are tired of arguing, making jokes that have neither humor nor a place in civilized company – and August never leaves a tip.
Compared to August, Dr. Suess’ pre-conversion Grinch is someone to whom you would give your daughter’s hand in marriage. After all, you could give a seasick crocodile some Dramamine. There is no cure for August.
I have never really cared for August.
Even when I was a freewheeling kid with all my joints and nerves functioning properly, August was frustrating. It was too hot to ride a bicycle all the way to our favorite place to swim and fish. Camping there became nightmarish as hordes of ravenous insects arose in the night like a bloodsucking, DDT-resistant fog. Summer camp and Vacation Bible School were pleasant memories. Baseball was over, school was a month away back then, those of my comrades whose families went on vacations or family trips were getting in a last hurrah before school started, and the library held no new adventures. One could only beat Galaga or Space Command or Pacman so many times before you were broke and bored with what passed for video games back then. Remember, not everyone had a home gaming system, back in the early Iron Age, and none of us had cellphones or the Internet. Come to think of it, August might have been better back then.
Lawns still had to be cut and hedges trimmed, since money had to be made for school clothes and dove season, and by the start of August, most parents had nothing left in the discretionary spending accounts.
I despised August then, and I am repulsed by August now.
August in an election year is like pouring rubbing alcohol on a bad case of poison ivy over a sunburn that has already been rubbed raw with steel wool. There are no redeeming qualities that are readily apparent, although like most politicians, the ones doing the pouring of the metaphorical alcohol always say it isn’t that bad.
August is a time of hurricanes, thunderstorms that do little more than turn the world into a sauna while causing the grass to be smothered by noxious weeds that never dry out enough to be mowed or gnawed by any self-respecting goat, and hazy days of a blazing sun that should be enough to convince any unrepentant sinner that Hell will not be a good place.
August is a time of profligate fleas, millions of mosquitoes, legions of ticks, and Revelation-quality plagues of fireants, all of which I am sure are being crossbred in some lab in a far eastern Communist country in the latest bid to outdo their previous attempts at biological warfare. It’s likely even called Project August.
August is 31 days of hot pavement embedded with Legos and sandspurs, after your shoes were stolen by a politician who is giving them to someone less fortunate.
August is spoiled molasses poured on a three-day-old fast-food biscuit found under the seat of a rusted Chevy Vega with an inch of oil-tainted rainwater in the floorboards.
It wasn’t quite August the other day when one of the accidental puppies grabbed my walking stick and sent me tumbling without time to tuck and roll for the fall. Instead I caught myself on outstretched arms and malfunctioning knees, with my fingers deeply embedding in goat manure where I was repairing the fence where some of my beloved baah-ing Baphomets had been sharpening their horns.
As I washed the mess from my hands and gave a resigned sigh as to the travesty that were my favorite pair of work pants, I realized that like a toothache, August would only last so long, even though one cannot use a pair of pliers and a tube of painkilling ointment to desperately, quickly excise August.
August can only torture us for a while before the loving mother that is September soothes and strokes the sweaty brow with cooling breezes that promise the joy of autumn. The Month of Golden Promise will mean whatever is left of the corn crop will be harvested, and the camaraderie of the dove hunt will return, with cold drinks and crackers and Vienna sausages on tailgates decorated with gray feathers, sweet-smelling empty shells and the drool of good dogs.
September will mean the haze will not be as prominent as during the months of the worst humidity, and the night sky will be clear again. Our “pet” deer Fireball, a semi-successfully rehabilitated year-and-a-halfling buck, will scrub his nubs against a pine tree to remove the velvet as the Swamp Ghost uses his massive rack to debark a convenient hickory as efficiently as the most modern logging equipment.
The catfish will once again stir, the bass will become more interesting, and the Young Turk coyotes will sing of an evening, leading to a Walker-Catahoula-blue ticked chorus in response from Jughead and Bingo, their daddy-dog Happy Jack, and whichever of our hounds are in the mood for a howl-off.
September is the only time I care about watching major league baseball, since by then most of the social justice warriors have received all the attention they need for their egos to be stroked, and baseball can be about the game, not the fame, money and politics.
The ocean can get angry in September, but it doesn’t take hours to find a parking place to enjoy a few hours on the sand, and there are rarely more people than I can tolerate on the beach.
Yes, September can be hot and humid and storm; the politicians will be shrieking even louder; the ridiculously early Christmas sales will be underway – but a man can breathe in September, and know there is hope.
But for 31 days, 744 hours, 44,640 minutes, or 2.6 million seconds (but who’s counting?), it is irrevocable, unredeemable, irritating, aggravating, unlovable, pestiferous, pulchritudinous, unrelenting, August.
But at least it’s not February.
