How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part 1

Summers generally end up the same way for me, year after year. Shoes on the porch (too wet for inside), alarming mosquito welts all over my arms and legs and also superficial wounds inflicted by plants, very light hair, millions of freckles and the same skirt every day. There’s another thing: every summer, wasps attempt to colonize the barbecue grill (which we call “The Groyl,” since it was built by my father, Roy). Usually my first barbecution occurs earlier in the season, so it’s a matter of plucking the little nest off, observing the pulsating life forms therein (deeply thrilling to observe) and hucking it far away into the backyard. This year there was no groyling until today, which is the fourth of July, and I am an American, dammit, and desired a smoky dog. But the nest had the time to grow bigger this year, with as many as six or seven adults nursing the wee ones. It was obviously a family in a house. I felt terrible, but understood profoundly that we were natural enemies, somehow. So I incapacitated them with Pam cooking spray and annihilated them with a blowtorch. Were I a hopeless cynic, I might think this to be a strangely appropriate way of celebrating the Fourth.