Summer, closing
Around noon today, I looked outside my bedroom window and noticed the yard crew at our neighbor’s house passed out on the sidewalk. Given the unrelenting triple-digit temperatures, I couldn’t blame them for falling prostrate on the shaded concrete for a brief reprieve from lawn work. Everything here seems to be in retreat: grass drying from green to tan; water inching slowly down the ladder on our dock; clouds flying high and thin, casting shadows of no significance.
And I realized that other things are dying, too. AOL instant messenger, for instance. I’m sure some people, somewhere still use AIM, but I can’t remember my last IM conversation. I occasionally use G-chat, but the red light, green light system makes me nervous for some reason. Facebook wall-posts seem to be the new IM, which is unfortunate since a wall-post is the communication equivalent of a drive-by shooting. Still, every time I receive a notification from Facebook, I experience a tingly feeling similar to involuntary shivers when someone passes behind you.
And then I thought about all the teen celebrities that suddenly disappeared. Alicia Silverstone. Sarah Michelle Geller. Jennifer Love Hewitt. What happened to these young twenty-somethings pretending to be teenagers? I guess they grew up — but into what? No one has heard from Jennifer since her last Neutrogena commercial, or Sarah since the conclusion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And why does Buffy remind me Freddy Prince Jr. — another used-to-be-somebody-now-nobody? A few weeks ago I heard a song by someone named “Buffy,” and I got really excited that Ms. Michelle Geller was back in business; but it turned out to be some British gal with equally blond hair.
Huh.
And now that I am talking about Sarah Michelle Geller, I am suddenly reminded of watching the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie at a friend’s sleep-over birthday party in the sixth grade. Let’s just say the lead actress had some definable bosoms that stunned/captivated a room full of adolescent boys (because we were boys then, not yet men). What an awakening that movie provided.
