I'm listening to Jane Sibbery again; No Borders Here in particular. It's a really fine album, and Mimi on the Beach always seems to hold the essence of teenage summers for me.

Summers have always been particularly memorable, even now that I'm working through them and they ought, by all rights, to be just another season. I can neatly classify them, going all the way back to 1989 or so, which was The Summer I Got Real Friends. Despite it being eight years ago I can still clearly remember how elated I was at the realisation that these people _liked_ me. I was, what, 13? And Kim was 14, and all the sudden she decided she liked me, and next thing I knew I was hanging out with the people she hung out with -- her older sisters, who were both just turning 19, and all of their friends. We went all over Oklahoma City -- to the zoo, to the amusement park, to the water park. We spent a lot of time gaming. Almost everyone in the group had a summer birthday, so for most of June and July there were birthday parties every weekend.

The summer of 1990 was the summer I dated Jay, and the summer Marcus and Kim started dating. The four of us were inseparable for a few months. There was lots of angst and gossiping and the usual sorts of things one finds among fifteen-year-olds with boyfriends in college.

The summer of 1991 I did Rocky Horror. Oh, did I do Rocky Horror. I played Janet every Friday and Saturday night for two months, and most of my free time was spent in OKC, hanging out with my cast. I had my first girlfriend that summer.

And so it goes. I can enumerate all my other summers that way, although it's not clear to met yet what the summer of 1996 was. Part of it was seeing Neil again, after giving him up for someone who could never be part of my life. Some of it was Kirby. A lot of it was falling in love with Earl, although that was happening so very slowly that I didn't realise it until it was upon me.

Mimi on the Beach reminds me most of the summers before I started mudding, though. 1989, 1990, 1991. I spent a lot of time doing the sorts of things one is supposed to do during summer, like swimming and eating ice cream and hanging out extensively with my friends. I hadn't really become a geek yet, at that point.

Does this sound like I miss it? I don't. I'm much happier now. But it's nice to have had it.