OP-ED: Summer in Virginia? No Thanks!
Summer in Virginia used to mean Capri Suns, ninja throwing stars, and zero bills to pay. Now it's record heat, invasive insects, and full-time employment. This op-ed makes the only rational case: abolish summer entirely and bridge spring directly into autumn. Science will handle the birthdays.
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I have submitted the following op-ed to the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, VA. It is my hope that despite the fact that it is wildly over their accepted word count, it will become a crowning jewel of their Opinion page. If you agree, please let them know.
According to a news article I read once, meteorological summer in Virginia (June 1 through August 31) is gross and terrible. Another news source I can’t remember offhand said that summers are getting hotter and encroaching on other seasons, shrinking their more temperate natures down, in some cases, to a few weeks of spring and sometimes as few as 49 hours of autumn.
“But I love summer!” you might be thinking, but you’re wrong. You don’t love summer. You love the summers that were. Warm, freewheeling, fun. Those were the summers you loved and they’re never coming back. In this writing, I intend to explain why we as a species are better off without the worst season of the year.
You see, summer was once a high point. I fondly remember swimming pools filled to the brim with children and their fluids, ice cream trucks swarming the streets like an invasive species, and no school or responsibilities anywhere to be seen. The temperatures were hot but manageable and the stabbing open of Capri Suns was enough to keep our arm muscles firm and rippling. But summer has become something different in the last few years. Now the temperatures are record-breakingly high, bugs are getting weirder and louder, and I’m expected to work at my job nonstop. This is why, in my opinion, we should take action against summer in Virginia.
According to science, the summer of 2024 was the hottest ever recorded for the whole planet. It should be mentioned here that this only includes records since 1880, when such records began being kept. It’s certainly possible that in May of 1879 Madison Square Garden opened because the prior structure, Gilmore’s Garden, melted due to intense and unimaginable heat, but I can’t find any evidence to support (or deny!) this. I can only assume that 2026, with its multiple heat waves, stands to be a strong contender for “hottest summer” in a worrying trend that continues its brutal and sweat-soaked march into the future.
Meanwhile, the hottest spring on record within the contiguous United States was in 2012. That was 14 years ago! Springs are lovely and refreshing, despite their assault on my delicate allergies. But I, personally, would take repeated, wet sneezing fits over constant dampness and the fear of pets on walks everywhere exploding like popcorn from rising temperatures. And the hottest autumn was in 2024 as a result of the oppressive heat of that year’s summer. In olden days, autumn in Virginia could be counted on for cool breezes and spooky trees, but now every Halloween costume has to be made of linen to prevent widespread heatstroke among children, their patient parents, and teens who are out begging for their pillowcases to be filled with candy. An autumn influenced by the preceding summer is becoming more and more terrible, but an autumn fed directly by spring? Divine. Or, for atheists and agnostics, Real Good.
Have you noticed the spotted lanternflies swarming around in the summer with their orange coloring and ostentatious spots? Well, I sure have. They were first spotted (get it?) in 2014 in Pennsylvania and have managed to make themselves a general nuisance everywhere in the years since. They’re all over the place slurping up tree sap and, forgive me, pooping out the disgustingly named “honeydew” that causes mold and makes it hard for plants to grow. Here in Virginia, we’re told to kill these little monsters on sight. Everyone is getting into the action, gleefully stomping every lanternfly that crosses their path. Even children. The bloodlust this generates in a whole generation of young people cannot be calculated, probably. Will we see a rise in stomping-related crimes in 20 years? It remains to be seen.
And the cicadas are getting out of control. They are very cool to look at, with their chitinous bodies, big red boba ball eyes, and sleek, veiny wings. But cicadas make their presence known through ominous, ululating humming sounds that make it difficult to have an outside conversation during the summer in Virginia. Often I will have to yell to my wife to pass me the lanternfly hammer when we’re sitting out on our deck just to be heard over the cacophony. We certainly don’t have these issues in the winter when we’re out there and I need some other pest hammer. Summer is directly related to the rampant droning and stomping, and a world without summer is a world with clean boot soles and less shouting.
When I was a kid, the best part of summer was the lack of responsibility. Many children would be out playing in sprinklers and doing sports of all kinds. I could often be found trying desperately to make the Street Fighter fighters execute combos or enjoying the educational delights of the Disney Afternoon. You don’t have the DuckTales theme song drilled into your head by sitting at a desk, I can tell you that much. One summer my friend PJ got some dull ninja throwing stars and we clumsily chucked them at my garage. The only responsibilities I had in those days were cleaning up the Lucky Charms crumb piles around the TV and dodging rebounding shuriken.
Now I have to keep working at my job despite it being summer. It’s not even a “just this once” kind of thing…it’s expected every year. No more days lounging by the pool or driving to roadside attractions or catching fireflies or chasing opossums and running away when they start hissing at me. Just sitting at my desk every day, working to afford the bills. I didn’t have to pay any bills when I was a kid and it was a much better time. But that time is no longer, and summer is instead a sweltering, sweat-slick, work-packed wasteland of time.
Of course, you’re probably thinking that I’m perhaps idealizing my personal childhood and the exact timeframe in which I grew up. But that’s not the case at all. My individual experience of summer is the exact experience everyone else has had because this is America and that’s how it works. One cannot deny that rising global temperatures, weird and noisy bugs, and too much job are a relatable and offensive series of events. It’s not just me! I look around and even see the kids washing cars and selling lemon water to afford their rising bills. Summer is a blight across the world and specifically in Virginia, because I live there.
So what do we do about this? In my opinion, the only rational solution is to eliminate summer altogether. Using the power of science, we snip meteorological summer out, bridging spring with autumn. Not just in Virginia, although we could start there, but across the whole United States of America. Imagine how powerful it would be to watch the trees bloom, flourish, and shed their leaves across two or three months instead of a whole dumb, hot summer. For metaphor purposes alone, it’s a reminder of the fleetness with which life passes us by. All the fleeter, once years are only 9 months long. And for those with birthdays during the affected months? That’s for science to figure out. I’m just a humble opinioneer.
