Happy sort of beginning of summer! Here we stand, on the precipice of another glorious summer—but what will it hold? The Daily Beast is proud to present the following probability listings, so that you may be prepared for any and everything Summer 2014 throws your way!
Possible Summer Happening: The New York Times will run a trend story about the increasingly ridiculous arrangements for people wanting to head out to the Hamptons, which will make zero sense to those of us who don’t live in the tri-state area, and, to be fair, isn’t applicable to 95 percent of New Yorkers either.
Probability: 92 percent
Signs: Any one of the following headlines: “For some, summer ‘share’ has turned into summer ‘knifefight to the death’”; “Jitney, Schmitney: One Percent Now Arriving at Montauk via Chartered Poor-Person Piggyback Ride”; “The price of a week in East Hampton? HAHA DOESN’T MATTER YOU CAN BARELY AFFORD RENT WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE ANYWAY?” All of these will end with some variant of the following: Ms. Pembreteaux laughed, then shrugged. “What can you do? It beats staying in the city.”
When it will hit: On a day you have overdrawn your bank account.
Possible Summer Happening: Hotness, but in an above-and-beyond way that definitely has absolutely nothing to do with global warming, so put that right out of your head. Nope. It’s just 97 degrees for two weeks straight, which, come to think of it, happened last year and the year before as well, and you live in Maine.
Probability: 96 percent, unless this spring you finally gave up and ordered central air conditioning, in which case, 15 percent.
When it will hit: 24 hours before you come down with strep throat.
Signs: Forearm sweat, searching for one of the four box fans you are SURE you own, buying a new box fan and immediately finding the others, an odd mix of anger and indolence that from now on should be called angerlence.
Possible Summer Happening: Begrudgingly attending your boss’s Fourth of July BBQ for exactly 34 minutes.
Probability: 96 percent, unless you get stuck talking to your boss’s partner, in which case you could be there for upward of 67 minutes.
Signs: Angrily cutting up cantaloupe for a fruit salad you’ve been assigned to bring, wondering why why why your boss would hold a pool party, giving yourself a pep talk in the car: “I will just go, and be there for a few minutes. It will be fun. I will talk to three people, have half a margarita, then leave,” staying and drinking seven margaritas instead, waking up with a terrible hangover, and wondering what you said last night to Kevin.
When it will hit: On June 21, when the “Carlsons’ 27th Annual 4th of July BBQ, Pool Party and Fireworks XTRAVAGANZA!!!” evite arrives in your inbox.
Possible Summer Happening: You talk all summer about how you are totally going to go camping—maybe even for a week!—and then don’t.
Probability: 87 percent
Signs: Fondly remembering that time you went camping as a child, looking at tiny expensive spice holders at REI.com, talking to that person at work who loves camping, remembering the last time you went camping and accidentally ate a spider while you were singing a happy hiking song.
When it will hit: When you have to step over human poop three discrete times on your way into work one morning and remember that there are places with exactly zero people around.
Possible Summer Happening: There will be a “Song of the Summer,” put out by a 19-year-old pop starlet whose name ends in -ie. You will really, truly, and unironically love this song and never say a word to anyone.
Probability: 83 percent
Signs: Very slight side-to-side head bopping when it is played in a department store; full-throated singing when you are alone in the car.
When it will hit: One time, when NPR is featuring a 45-minute interview on the rising price of bran and how it relates to climate change, you will begin scanning and land on the Top 40 station. A bright voice that sounds like youth and sunshine and not even caring when her parents want her home because it’s summmmmmer! will boom out at you. You will remember the summers when you spent all day walking the three miles to a 7-Eleven for a Slurpee and then sitting by a pond with your friends. You will then realize that those days are over, forever and irretrievably gone, but at least there is this tiny kernel that reminds you of swimmer’s ear, halter-top sunburns, and drinking wine coolers in a field.
Possible Summer Happening: A congressman will bang an intern, and this nation will finally get the throwback fax-sexting (fexting?) scandal we didn’t even know we were longing for.
Probability: Not applicable; this is happening right this moment
Signs: To be clear, every congressman is banging every intern. This is as eternal and unchangeable as that suffocating D.C. humidity that makes your own mouth feel cold and breezy by comparison. However, one of these assignations will go above and beyond in one of the following ways:
a) It will be a family-values congressman and one of his many Abercrombie model-esque communications interns;
b) The intern, when she is not an intern, is a bikini model, prolific amateur poet and not very good at Facebook privacy settings; or
c) Somehow, Bill Clinton was involved in introducing them and there is a picture of the three of them together and you can tell from the twinkle in his eyes that ol’ Bill knows exactly what is going to happen.
When it will hit: Don’t worry—you will not be able to miss it.