In an attempt to avoid stepping on a toad the other night, I inadvertently found a piece of broken glass. In the interest of keeping this column family-friendly, I will only say that it hurt, I bled, and I did not use any words of which I was ashamed, although I came close.
Hobbling back to the house in the dark in my bare feet, I found where one of the dogs had been a good boy or girl, thus necessitating a bit more cleaning that anticipated.
Keep in mind, I rarely go outside without shoes. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being barefoot, but obstacles like the one above are de rigueur in our little corner of the swamp. Not to mention it’s breeding season for venomous snakes, and I doubt there’s another guardian angel willing to block yet another angry serpent from injecting me with his dissenting opinion because my gnarled, scarred, rather unpleasantly fragrant Size 13 tromped said serpent in the night.
I hobbled back to the house, trying to outrun (or at least, outlimp) serpents and sepsis, and it just reminded me that I hate August.
It wasn’t even August yet, officially, but August loomed like a root canal appointment with a dentist armed with rusty tools, delirium tremens and shaking fingers.
I must qualify that my hatred is of the month, not my friend of the same name. How one of the finest, most loyal Christan brothers a man can have was named August is beyond me, but then again, he lives in that Other, Lower Carolina, so that might have played a role. I love that August.
But I loathe the month of August.
A friend taunted me the other day: it was 86 degrees at his mountain home while we were dealing with heat indices somewhere around the level of eternal perdition. I secretly tried to figure out how to send him a care package of rotting socks, ruined shirts, horseflies, melted chocolate, sweat, mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, angry Yankee drivers, and empty water bottles that hide under the seat of the car until it’s time for them to jump out and jam the brake pedal because of a Yankee driver. Problem was that most of those things violate postal service and anti-terrorism laws.
Considering that August violates most of the laws of human decency, it would have been an appropriate gift.
August is the cousin nobody knows who always attends the family reunion no one wanted to go to in the first case. August spends the entire time hitting on the girl cousins who may soon turn 18 while talking about his three different baby mamas, his stints in rehab, his latest DWI, and how big of a settlement he will get from slipping in a puddle of the Pepsi he spilled while shoplifting in Walmart. He’ll bum cigarettes, steal your lighter, pack up three takeout plates and beg gas money for his rusted unmuffled 1987 Dodge truck bearing stolen, outdated plates. On top of that, it’s never clear who he is even related to, but since he’s family, he has to be included.
I despise August.
August is a sniveling, sweat-sticky, sadistic, sin-stinking, sinuous, snake-infested, soul-sapping, backbreaking, brain-damaging, bone-bruising, nebulous, nerve-wracking, numbing, nauseating, inbred, infected, inane, irritating, revolting, repugnant, regurgitated, refuse-ridden excuse of a month.
I never fail to have to kill a snake or two in August, because their romantic inclinations apparently require entering one of the snake-free zones around our house, and picking a fight with one of our dogs. And naturally, said trespassing snakes cannot be the kinds I grab and carry away – oh no. The herpetological Romeos and Juliets must be copperheads and cottonmouths. Rattlers apparently are civilized enough to breed in the spring, but copperheads and cottonmouths just embody all things August.
I reject you, August.
The fish that are still biting are deep and somnolent, unless one is willing to fight mosquitoes large enough to require FAA transponders. There is nothing to hunt, since coyote hides are worthless and wild hogs will be cooked before you can get them out of the woods. Youth baseball is largely over. Even if I liked football, it’s too dang early to think about football. Never mind soccer, golf, basketball or those other lesser pursuits.
The less said about August’s television choices, the better. TV is bad enough during the regular season, but by August what few shows I can tolerate are showing the same repeats they showed last week. It’s like Groundhog Day, except with mutant horseflies.
When I was a kid, August was even worse. Aside from the aforementioned baseball and fishing, after Scout and church camps and family vacations for a fortunate few, there was little else to do other than ride our bikes someplace where we could find air conditioning. That meant having quarters for video games, which required working in the merciless August sun, or sitting quietly in the library, which most of us were thoroughly incapable of doing for any length of time. Sometimes we could find relief in tepid swimming holes, if we could dodge the venomous snakes and no trespassing signs.
We did all this while we dreaded the return to school. While we would eventually become excited at the prospect, the first week of August just meant were that much closer to once again losing our freedom. August meant summer, the glorious time of youth, was dying, and there nothing we could do.
I hate August.
But after a few weeks of torment and torture, September’s sweet kiss will once again wipe away the tears of anger and frustration.
Yes, September can always bring hurricanes, but so can any other summer month, and September also brings dove season, the feel of a beloved old shotgun brought out and wiped down, shells counted, and days marked off until the season opener, the reunion with friends and family over fields where pink-purple rockets flash in the sunset and you wipe the sweat from your brow and reload, already tasting the mushroom gravy and seeking the approval of your dog.
September means the first of the cooler – not cool, but cooler – nights, with just a whispered hint of autumn’s coming glory of frost and hounds and steaming breath in the morning light and the snorting blow of a suspicious buck. September means bluefish and spots and Spanish mackerel and the first empty beaches.
September often means family reunions and church homecomings, with tables groaning with food designed to feed the body and soul while maintaining a family’s reputation.
It is just the thought of September that keeps me functioning through the Slough of Despond known as the month of August. I remind myself that I only have to make it a few weeks, and we will be through that most pestilential period of purgatory, that utterly hated month of August.
Then I can breathe a sigh of relief, filling my lungs with clean autumn air, waiting for winter’s bite – and enjoy it until February rears its ugly, misshapen, mutated head.
But until then – I hate August.
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