Summer Lament, Or The Della Femina Curse

I publish this column every year as a public service to make sure your friends and relatives will think twice before they send you an invitation that will screw you out of a precious summer weekend.

I must admit, it is harder to write my annual summer lament column this year because it was such a weird, cold, rainy April. Spring no longer exists because we now go from 42 degrees one day to 84 degrees the next.

Remember, you can’t blame the miserable cold weather on global “warming” anymore. The contradiction of freezing your ass off during a “warming” was too much for even our politically correct hand wringers.

Plus, scientists from the University of Michigan and the University of Florida now show that there were big jumps in climate warming when the dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago.

My theory is that the dinosaurs roaming the earth were suffering from dinosaur flatulence, and we all know what that could do to the atmosphere. Naturally, there were some politically correct cavemen around in those days and they formed “The Committee To Protect Flatulent Dinosaurs,” but alas, they were too late, and after a few blasts from a few gassy dinos, the earth, as it is now, was doomed.

But then, what do I know?

So now the new phrase is “climate change.” Snow in May? Damn, that definitely must be climate change.

But climate change or not, Memorial Day is just days away. So here goes the question I ask every year.

Why do they do it?

Why do our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can’t they get married in February? Why do they choose the middle of summer to have birthdays, anniversaries, Bar Mitzvahs and family, college, high school, and even nursery school reunions?

That’s not all. Frankly, some of them are thoughtless enough to die in June, July, and August, and there goes another summer weekend.

I promise that if it’s possible, when it’s time for me to go, I will go on life support until some rainy Friday morning in January so that my mourners can bury me early in the morning and still enjoy a three-day weekend. That’s the kind of generous guy I am.

Now I know you’re wondering what I’m ranting about, since you’re on top of the world because it looks like another endless summer ahead. Let’s just see how endless it really is.

If you work Monday to Friday like me, that leaves you with around 12 summer Saturdays and Sundays, plus three long holiday weekends. So, from the minute you’re reading this, summer weekends are a total of about 33 days.

Now you know that at least nine or 10 of these days will be cold, rainy days where —no matter how hard you try to avoid it — you’ll end up arguing with your spouse. All a man has to say is, “No, I don’t think it’s romantic to freeze my behind off walking in the rain on the beach. Why don’t we stay in bed and fool around?” And that’s when the pouting starts. So, write off 10 miserable days to weather and you’re left with 25 days.

Sound like a lot?

I bet everyone reading this already has one lost weekend coming up when your Aunt Matilda is celebrating her 50th wedding anniversary and she and your Uncle Benny would be broken-hearted if you don’t show up on a beautiful Saturday afternoon to their house in Brooklyn or the Bronx or Westchester or wherever the hell they live.

So, now you’re down to 21 days. If you’re young enough to have children, that means you’re stuck with a trip to some summer camp with an Indian . . . er . . . er . . . Native American name in Maine or Massachusetts, in the middle of what always turns out to be the sunniest, most beautiful weather weekend of the summer.

This is where you are sentenced to spend the weekend admiring neatly made bunk beds and ceramic ashtrays (which in these politically correct days have gone from being called ashtrays to being called “candy dishes” to just being called “dishes,” now that candy is seen by some politicians as being worse than cigarettes).

Show me a camp that is wise enough to schedule parents’ visiting days on a Monday and Tuesday and I will show you a camp that deserves the exorbitant amount of money they get to guard your kids for the summer. An amount of money, I might add, that is more than it took, a few short years ago, to cover the tuition of four years at an Ivy League college.

If your children are grown, it’s even worse. They have children and all their children are having birthday parties in town in July, where you will find yourself overcome by heat while you’re surrounded by 20 sticky five-year-olds playing musical chairs.

What frosts me is the weather. Did you ever notice that every one of the weekends you have to go to a family event is beautiful? The sun is shining. The sky is blue. And you are stuck in some disgusting catering hall, or, worse, drinking warm white wine out of a plastic cup in some relative’s backyard in White Plains.

Which brings me to summer weddings in the city. They must be banned.

There are some facts that people who drag their friends away from the beach for their wedding must be made aware of. Jerry Seinfeld, an East Hampton resident, once had a message for all the newly engaged couples: “Nobody wants to go to your wedding! We are not excited like you are.”

Mr. Seinfeld is so, so right. The only people who must attend a summer wedding are the bride and groom, their respective parents, the best man and the maid of honor, and maybe a priest or a rabbi. All the other guests are hostages who may be smiling but inside they are seething because they have had one of their precious summer weekends screwed up.

I remind every dewy-eyed couple in my family that in the summer it’s bad luck to get married any place west of Westhampton. I remind them of the famous Della Femina Curse, which is still going strong. I have, in my life, attended five weddings that took place on a summer holiday weekend (four Memorial Day, one Labor Day) and I must report, in all honesty, that four out of five of those couples are no longer married.

Pass the word — the marriages of people who screw up my holiday weekends are doomed.

If you wish to comment on “Jerry’s Ink” please send your message to jerry@dfjp.com.