The Chatterbox Times

It's the beginning of August and most kids are going back to school. Whatever happened to the long, leisurely summers I once had? I remember when summer used to go on forever, but now it's ending in a few weeks. I have never been able to understand why some schools start classes in the beginning of August and end at the end of May. I can only imagine how hot the classrooms would be the first couple weeks of school. In Chester, it's still hot in August and it's still a bit chilly in May. Here, it doesn't start warming up until the end of June. But, I suppose that it all has to do with where you live.

Last week I went shopping with one of my cousins. She started school on the eleventh and had to get all these back-to-school supplies.  I was surprised when I went in the store and saw the signs for all these back-to-school sales. Why did summer have to go by so fast? Someone once told me that the reason that school started early was so that football teams could start practice earlier in the summer.  Technically, you're not supposed to start football practices more than two weeks before school starts. The solution to that would be to start school earlier.

It is finally July. This is supposedly the month where it is scorching hot. It's the core of the lazy days of summer. It's the time to go swimming. It's taken long enough...except that instead of warmth, there's smoke everywhere. Sometimes the wind blows in another direction and it's clear for a couple hours, if we're lucky. But some days, you can barely breathe outside, it's so smoky. But each week, it gets clearer than the week before, all thanks to the help of our firefighters. A lot of them have started to leave Chester. Before, they all slept in tents on the high school baseball field. There were so many tents everywhere.

In my opinion, June is one of the best months. It has the total feeling of euphoria. It's the end of school, the start of summer. The possibilities are endless. If you want to get all technical, summer starts June twenty-first, but everyone considers Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer. It's odd because it was breezy at the start of June, colder than May. It's warmed up now. but I panicked for a week because I thought that Chester would have a 'cold' summer. Anything could happen in the mountains. Three years ago, it actually snowed in June. I've heard that a decade or two ago, it snowed on the Fourth of July. Snow is fun during the wintertime, but you don't exactly want to wear snow clothes when it's warm out.

This month, I am very confused. The other day, the temperature here was an alarming ninety-five degrees. Now to most, this would not be a surprise. But for fellow Chestarians, this is extremely high for May. It's even high for June. May is supposed to be the month when there's still a little rain and the flowers are all blooming and everyone starts to wear shorts. May is not supposed to be the month where you cannot survive without air conditioning. In fact, Chester is not the type of town where anyone should hear of air conditioners, much less own one. Hopefully, the weather will cool down at least to eighty for May and then rise to ninety-five towards the end of June. Everything would be a lot nicer if we could control the weather.

For some reason, April seems to be the longest month. In Chester, it's the transition from winter to spring. It's a contrast to those places where it's eighty degrees in March and everyone has their swimsuits already picked out. I remember that a year or two ago, there was a March when we didn't have snow. The days were all nice and cheery and flowers started blooming. Then, just as quickly, there was a big snow storm. Needless to say, the flowers did not survive that. I'm hoping that the tulips I planted two years back will bloom this year. I've never had a "green thumb" like some people so I am proud to say that my tulips have bloomed before. I highly doubt that they will this year, considering that we have trampled the flower bed numeous times in an attempt to make an igloo. Maybe I'll get lucky this year, you never know.

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