August, You Make Me Nuts
It’s August, Hamptonites.
The time when temperatures run hot, temperaments run hotter and polite social behavior runs on fumes. We city folk are nearing our nature-exposure past-due date, so I implore you to listen up so we can all make it to Labor Day in one piece. Good? Good.
Pickleballers:
You love the game and so do I. But if that passion finds you shrieking at your partner to “MOVE UP!” or chiding “YOU SHOULD HAVE HAD THAT!!!” so ferociously that your engorged neck veins are visible from space (or Quogue) may I suggest that you wash down a Klonopin with some rosé and CALM THE F*CK DOWN. It’s pickleball. No one knows the rules, no one can tell what’s out or what’s in or can see which lines are old tennis court lines; no one knows the correct score and no one remembers who served last. It hardly seems like a game you’d want to expend all that vitriol. Save that fury for the next time you try and find a parking spot in Sag Harbor. Good? Good.
Round Swamp shoppers:
You know the drill: Round Swamp has a capacity for 25 but is routinely swarmed by twice that, half of whom wield shopping carts like weaponry. By the time you squeeze in, everything you want will be gone, especially the Detox salads. Your total is always at least $250 and it’s an interminable wait to pay, on a line snaking through the entire store and looping around again. Inevitably, on line you are nose-deep in the sweaty tee of a Barry’s Boot Camp guy whose stench makes you clamor to move back, but thanks to the cart-wielding, cell-phone yelling, Detox salad-hoarding nightmare behind you, you can’t.
This is our Round Swamp. It’s not what we’d wish for, but it’s what we accept. EXCEPT we will not accept Granola Grabbers. Granola is on a shelf near the cash register, so normal, considerate people get granola en route to pay. But August brings out a crop of handsy, entitled, line-infiltrating monsters. All I can say is if you try and grab granola before getting online, people will murder you and I will help them. Round Swamp is a delicate ecosystem of people not used to waiting, who can last only as long it takes to read Page Six, so don’t tempt fate and do not grab. After the crowding and the prices -- and I hate to be the one to tell you but literally everything in Round Swamp has butter in it -- it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. Good? Good.
Party People:
I love a Hamptons party as much as anyone, but in the dog days of August I need to call attention to a terrible wrong. Specifically, dance floor talking. Listen girl, if you want to chat, I’m all ears at the bar, but not on the dance floor. I like to dance. To loud music. Which means, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. Like, not at all. And because I can’t hear you, and I still want to dance, I have to use my go-to facial expression when I can’t hear what you said but can tell you want some sort of response. That go-to is to throw my head back, laugh uproariously, and look at you like you’ve just told me the funniest, best news. It often works, but to the woman who told me she had breast cancer and got that reaction, I can’t apologize enough. Plus, if I’m being honest, is there anything we really need to dance and talk about? I am not ashamed to say I ran out of chit-chat in early July, so let’s just shout lyrics at each other like regular people. Good? Good.
Sag Harbor Five & Dime Cashier:
Dear Cashier Woman, can I get a smile? It would make my day to just once frequent your store and see that grimace leave your face, even for a millisecond. It’s not like I’m calling you out for somehow still selling Reggie candy bars I believe were discontinued in 1981. But please, just give me a little kindness. Listen, I get it: You hate summer people and August brings out the masses. But who do you think is buying that expired Coppertone? It’s me. I’m the problem it’s me. We’re all going through August together so why not just smile? I feel like we could be friends and dance together at parties and on the dance floor you could tell me the story behind why you’re… oh, never mind. I’m good.
