Names and Summer
For me, summer is the greatest time of the year. There’s no school, which equates to a certain type of freedom, but like the cold and damp spring—if you can even call it that— of New England, it’s only the setup for the rest of the drama.
To fully enjoy summer you have to use all of your senses. You have to see the vibrant greenness of everything and smell the ubiquitous freshness. You have to feel the early morning dampness and refreshing breezes of the afternoon. You have to hear the hum of nature on a cool night and the sound of a distant cicada on a hazy, humid day. Summer sends its kiss with warmth and blooming life.
But maybe it’s like what my brother says—maybe it’s just because I’m sick of our seemingly perpetual winter. I just want to get the most out of my three short months of paradise. But I say that’s only the beginning. I say it begins and ends with memories, good or bad, and there’s no changing my mind. These are mine:
There’s a certain feeling in the air tonight. A strange, completely incongruous coolness. I sigh a breath of relief when I realize that it’s only the fan in the window. I’m not used to that. I’m not used to smelling fresh night air. It smells familiar, somehow, and my mind traces back three years. Summer Camp. I was fifteen, an age supposed to be “worldly wise†by modern day standards, but it was the very first time I had ever done something without the rest of my family. I was still a child until that week.
For some reason I can’t remember doing Taekwon-Do at all. I know I must have because I recall being sore almost every day, but nothing specific comes to mind. I remember running. Yes, things are coming back to me now. Morning calisthenics. Mr. Oulundsen pushed us so hard to keep going. I never considered myself to be very perseverant or athletic.
Maybe it was the thought of disappointing Mr. Oulundsen or looking wimpy in front of the two cute girls behind me, but on that morning I sensed a solid resolve envelop me—a feeling I would not soon forget. For the first time in my life I was going to be good at something. Really good. There was no other option. There was no one to cry to (metaphorically of course). I was on my own.
I’m remembering those two girls now. My instructor, Mr. King, could tell that I liked at least one of them, so he asked them to say hi to me whenever they walked by. It was very embarrassing, but I really didn’t mind. A normal girl had never spoken to me like that before. I knew that they were only being nice because they were asked to, but I also knew that they didn’t have to keep doing it. Their names were Nicole and Brittany, and they were both from Virginia. I liked Nicole. She was much cuter close up than her friend, in my opinion, and she was blonde.
One day in the middle of the week I worked up enough courage to go talk to Nicole, or Nikki, as everyone else called her. I found her sitting at a picnic table with another guy, who I learned to be her boyfriend. That hurt. For the first time in my life I felt a genuine hatred toward another human being for absolutely no reason. A part of me wanted to kill that guy on the spot. I was jealous—jealous about something I never thought I would jealous about.
It felt like I was growing up and becoming more immature all at once.
A few days later I was rather surprised to see Brittany going out of her way to approach and talk to me. In another feeling quite foreign to me, I sensed that she liked me. I don’t know if it was what she was saying or how she was saying it, or maybe it was the way she was looking at me, but I could tell. Yet for some reason I didn’t find her attractive any longer. On that day I realized that there would always be two paths: the easy one right in front of your face, or the difficult one on the picnic table with another guy. And I always had to pick the difficult one. It’s the difference between really living and simply surviving.
On Thursday I had to spar Nikki’s boyfriend for my test. He was a blue belt, and I was only green—two full ranks lower. I had just begun sparring training, so I wasn’t very good or agile, but I managed to get two punches square into Jeremiah’s unguarded nose, a feat I later regretted. I won. The judges wrote off my excessive force to inexperience, but I still wonder if my jealousy guided my fists.
On the last day of camp Nikki said goodbye to me and gave me a hug. She turned to get into the van bound for Virginia, but I called her back. I wanted to be able to talk to her again. As she returned I weighed my options. I thought that asking for her phone number would be too weird. I’d never be able to build up enough courage to actually call her, not really knowing her at all. Her e-mail address was another alternative, but it seemed too slow a means to get to know someone. I settled on asking for her screen name, and I think it was a good choice.
Yes, that’s what this feeling in the air tonight reminds me of. Everything is the same as it was on all those summer nights talking to Nikki online. She was so different from anyone I had ever spoken to, even to this day. She was a teenage girl from a very wealthy family who had everything she could ever want, and she loved life and everything in it. She broke up with her boyfriend a few weeks after camp.
A few of our conversations are coming back to me now. I look back on them and laugh. She would always call herself a dumb blonde, and I would always tell her that it wasn’t true. I remember calling her once from Arlington National Cemetery when we were on vacation in D.C. just to tell her that I was in Virginia and only a few hours away. She thought that was really cool.
To this day, Nicole is the only person my age that would consistently go out her way to start a conversation with me instead of the other way around. She would click on my screen name and say hi to me before I had a chance to say hi to her.
But like all good things that live halfway across the country, whatever Nikki and I had between us eventually came to an end. Maybe it was because summer was over. I’d get busy with school and wouldn’t be online for a week or two. Then she would get busy with school or sports or friends and often we wouldn’t speak for months.
I remember talking to her on Easter two years ago. We caught up on a lot of things. She was going to a private school now, and was doing great. I had asked her several months before if she wanted to help me write my first issue of the Po-Zor Newsletter, and on that day she finally turned it what she had done for an article. We explained that being online was getting in the way of schoolwork, so I suggested we switch to e-mail.
Here’s the end of what we said:
Eric: Before you go, tell me: are you going to camp this summer?
Nicole: Yep u know it!
Eric: Awesome! Ok, talk to you later.
Nicole: ok i love ya 
Eric: I can’t wait to see you again! Bye.
Nicole:
Nicole: ok and i will e mail u i promise
Nicole: TTYL buh bye (i will miss ya)
Nicole: you can always gimmie a ring too
Eric: I will!
Nicole:Â Â i will ttyl :X:X
Nicole:Â Â bye bye
Eric: bye
I waited three months and I never got an e-mail. On the first day of camp two years ago I realized that she wasn’t going to be there. I gave her a call, and she said that she had started playing softball and wouldn’t be able to make it after all. She also said that she had stopped Taekwon-Do for a while—at high red no less. So close to black! I could hear her friends in the background, and she told me that she had to go. I told her expectantly that I was still waiting for that e-mail she had promised. She laughed and said that she would get right on it. Two years later, I’m still waiting for that e-mail.
It’s getting a little chilly, so I’m shutting of the fan. I’m opening my old Yahoo Messenger program now, just for kicks. There she is, offline. I bet she doesn’t even use the same screen name anymore. I wonder what she’s doing right now. I wonder if she ever checks to see if I’m online. I wonder if she even remembers me.
I still keep a picture of her with my favorites. I guess I’ll always remember her from that picture, though, even when we’re both much older. A young fourteen-year-old girl frozen in time. Maybe it’s better that way. But in any case it’s time to sleep. I wonder what memories the heat of tomorrow morning will bring.
 ~Eric