The Perfect Summer Night
A recipe
Preheat your evening to 90 degrees. If you’re not in the South, adjust your settings to below 70 degrees.
Have your best friend burn 10 tracks onto a CD. Summer pop hits from the mid aughts preferred. Options include, but are not limited to:
Face Down by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Sugar, We’re Goin Down by Fallout Boy
Temperature by Sean Paul
Cupid’s Chokehold by Gym Class Heroes
Mr. Brightside by The Killers
Hey There Delilah by The Plain White T’s
Beautiful Girls by Sean Kingston
Umbrella by Rhianna
Big Girls Don’t Cry by Fergie
The Sweet Escape by Gwen Stefani
Expertly layer your 2 favorite Old Navy tank tops. Take care to choose colors that compliment each other nicely.
Prepare ahead of time: Plan your outfit in advance and match your braces to the preselected tank tops at your next orthodontist appointment.
Head to Chili’s with aforementioned best friend while listening to aforementioned burned CD and squeal over the prospect of your crushes potentially showing up to admire aforementioned layered Old Navy tank tops (and braces, if using).
Cleverly position yourself between your best friend and said crush at the table and spend the entirety of the meal preoccupied with the distance between your pinky finger and his. 1 finger brush is accidental; 2 or more is purposeful.
Deftly slip the pot holder from the queso skillet into your sequined shoulder bag. Save until you have a car of your own and can affix your loot onto your turn signal like every other teen driver in town.
When dinner is over, pile into cars and head to the local sand volleyball courts. This should leave enough listening time for 2-3 songs. Choose ones best suited to scream singing.
Show off your former 8th grade B-team-volleyball skills1 on the court. Make sure to repeatedly chant bump, set, spike it, that’s the way we like it! so as to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that you did, indeed, play volleyball.
Once the sun begins to set behind the oak tress, head to the local sno cone stand and order a wedding cake flavored sno cone with the ice shaved so thin, it immediately melts in your mouth.
Speak exclusively in inside jokes and laugh so loudly the parents and young children enjoying their sno cones throw you sidelong glances. Ignore these glances and continue laughing until your belly aches. You’ll never see these strangers again, but in twenty years, you will still laugh just as hard with these same friends.
After closing down the sno cone stand, head to the house of whoever’s turn it is to host the sleepover. Make sure to only pack the bare essentials. You have your whole life ahead of you to become a high maintenance packer.
Wedge yourself into arm chairs and squeeze together on couches as the opening credits to Step Up flash across the screen. Expect to remain seated for only 20 minutes or so before the uncontrollable urge to dance takes over and you all collapse in a heap of giggles on the carpet by the end of the movie2.
Stay awake until 2:00 am through a mixture of late night YouTube videos, hushed giggles, analysis of earlier pinky brushing, predictions of future boyfriends/husbands/children/jobs, and more inside jokes. Once your eyelids are heavier than your sequined shoulder bag and 1-2 minutes pass between conversation topics, you may finally fall asleep.
Awake sometime after 10:00 am the next morning and prepare to do it all again every night for the next 2 months until school starts again.
This prompt was inspired by a prompt given in
’s workshop Sunday Evening Stories, which she’s hosting again in July. Writing this made me so nostalgic for my high school summers that I went down a rabbit hole of old pictures and songs for many many hours. If you, too, find yourself fond of music from the mid aughts, enjoy this playlist I made. I’m so curious to know what songs take you back to the summers of your youth, please share!!
Undefeated
This will also still be the case in 20 years
Loved this! Layered tank tops and burned cds, what else do you need?
So nostalgic! Reading this was so fun let’s bring back making burned cds for each other.