Every freaking September. Every year, from first grade to senior year of high school. Every English teacher always began the fall semester with this assignment. Consider this essay a pre-emptive sense memory twitch.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation
First let me tell you how I didn't spend my summer vacation. I didn't spend a month rattling around the back corner of a 61 Impala station wagon amongst enough sharpened tent stakes to replace the aluminum siding on a row of double wides in Satan's trailer court. Which is how I spent the July between third and fourth grades.

Because of this nightmarish remembrance of dings past I refuse to camp. I'm sorry, but my idea of a good time no longer includes sleeping on the ground, going potty behind rocks and dodging winged insects the size of toaster ovens in poison oak patches. To me, the outdoors is where the car is. Roughing it means TV without CNN. You say Wilderness, I think Wal-Mart.

My summer was mostly Spectravision, the crazed early morning looting of various hotel mini-bars, and the never-ending quest for functioning air conditioning. You wanna know the most memorable part of my summer vacation? I survived.

Of course these days referring to our annual series of elaborate complex operations as a "vacation" is like calling an F-5 tornado a brisk breeze. That frenetic whirlwind of activity we endure rather than enjoy is to relaxation what a space shuttle liftoff is to lunch hour at the Iron Rapids South Dakota regional airstrip. Voice Mail Muzak Hell. Ticket screwups. Lost reservation numbers. Expired Travel Vouchers. Rental car rejects from demolition derbys. Road food issues. Relatives. Therapy. Ultimatums. Emergency rooms. Clergy. Black tie memorial services.

For one thing, in no way does a week even come close to cutting it. You could easily spend half that time hanging around airport lounges waiting stand-by after finding yourself bumped more times than the Osmonds reproduce. Coming home, either you afford yourself a mandatory two days rest to recover from your vacation, or risk stall slumber.

And the whole thing has very little to do with vacating. Or getting away and leaving it all behind. Especially in this modern age when most of us are little more than leashed rats umbilically attached to command central's maze by a battery of pagers, cell phones, faxes, emails and voice activated underwear (now being beta tested.) Kids have vacations. Us grown-ups are lucky to enjoy a brief respite.

Back in January I booked myself to work at an outdoor summer festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin named Summerfest. Surely I must have been thinking about some Disney movie I lived once: "Summer in the Midwest. Barefoot at a barbecue. Sand under the elastic of your underwear. Lemonade so tart it makes your toes shrivel. The tinny mantra of a baseball game on an AM radio. Men obviously bereft of mirrors naked from the waist up. What could be better than summer in the Midwest?"

Well, wintering at an Antarctic nudist camp springs to mind. Bungee jumping into a rotting vertical zinc mine with a decaying goat tied to your neck has to rank right up there. Three weeks in a leaky decompression chamber with Richard Simmons hyped up on methamphetamine patches could be its equal. I forgot about the heat.

It was stupid hot in the Midwest this summer. Three days in a row in Milwaukee and we're talking 106, 106 and 101 -- so hot and muggy, all clothing felt like greasy Saran wrap. The humidity reportedly crested over 100%. Which reminds me. How does that work? Doesn't that mean you're underwater? Shouldn't that information be targeted mostly to marine mammals?

And you'd think people would be miserable enough faced with the scorch of triple digits, but no, now we have to come up with an agony stake for our summer heart; temperature plus humidity. The "heat index" sounds like a law enforcement mutual fund. Instead of spending all their spare time devising new ways to torment us, why don't these weathermen take their barometric pressure and cram it where their dew point never drops? Create a blue screen graph to tell me stuff I can use. Do I need a frozen umbrella drink? A radiation suit? Oars?

And wrap this around your frontal lobe. 100,000 people a day. Outdoor festival. Overused outdoor porta potties exponential factor five. In 106° degree heat. Trust me, you would be well advised not to allow your olfactory sense memories to linger on this one.

The gig is exactly what you would expect. Wilting piles of sweltering humanity seeking the shade of the comedy tent distracted only by large menacing gestures, crude grunting noises, and the brandishment of fire. "Hot bright light bad." I smile inwardly, "Finally. My crowd."

During my routine in front of 5,000 heat stroke victims, a lady with long grey hair in a tie dyed skirt spins, or was it twirls, to the front of the stage and starts to dance. To comedy. In this heat. I pause. Shrug. And move on. Whatever gets you through the night. Or in this case -- blight. The comedy tent has ripened into an equatorial sauna. Entire quadrants slump. The beer vendors pass out with taps gaping. I'm performing in a beer swamp. It's my element. I kill.

Summer inhales its first fragile breath at 3:01 PM the last day of school and succumbs at 8 am some lethargic morning near Labor Day, whenever the new scholastic term starts. This fact is known to all except those persnickety astronomers who stubbornly insist the season lasts until the 23rd of September. Ironically enough the very date summer weather hits San Francisco, and lingers for maybe five weeks tops. We should call it Sumtumn. Or Autmmer.

You know who I feel sorry for? The tourists who miscalculate "San Francisco" as "California," add it to "July" and come up with "summer." 2 plus 2 equals negative 39 degrees Celsius. Awfully hard to muffle the snickers spying their feeble frantic efforts to keep warm on Fishermen's Wharf, wearing t-shirts and shorts sporting blue puckered shivering thighs and white starchy children. Then they give anybody dressed halfway normally the stink eye like it's your fault for failing to warn them. Like we're conspiring with the National Weather Service to keep our chill a deep dark secret.

Trust me people: there is no fog omerta. Besides, it shouldn't take an IQ much higher than a bag of cilantro stems to be cognizant you've entered a nightmare not of your own making as you pass street vendors in fur lined parkas selling hot soup. The sight of your own breath should be clue one. Ice crystals lapping at the edge of the pool: clue two.

My sympathy engine is broke. After a week making my own gravy, I'm about to enter the polar gates of the 415 area code and counting on the climatic aberrations of our frosty city. Coming back from the gig on a twice delayed one stop from O'Hare soaking in three layers of my own dried sweat, I look out the window, see the cool grey shroud of anonymity cloaking the Bay like a refrigerated comforter, and thank whatever force drew me here 20 years ago.

There you are. My blessed fog. Welcoming me home. I weep uncontrollably until the stewardess slaps the back of my head with a bag of mustard flavored pretzels.