Summer, Melting Away Already

It's never too soon to regret the summer we didn't have. Those pangs start now, on Memorial Day, as summer already slips away, like losing your favorite sunglasses again, and wearing a new pair that never feels right, that you regret buying. Let's not wait and do this in the last week of August, let's regret summer now: All the nights we meant to eat outside, until we saw how long the wait was for a table. All our dirty furniture on the deck, which is really only a balcony, which we regret.

Teddy Kennedy has cancer in his brain and he's already been sailing once since he got home from the hospital, probably more. We regret that it's another summer and we still (still) somehow don't know people who own boats or summer houses by the sea. (Some of us, on the other hand, regret knowing these people. It sounds so much better in theory, until the day such people take you out on their boat and it turns out to be more work than your weekday job: Lift this, tie this, hold this. Everyone push on the count of three, etc. We see boats and see regret.)

Your wedding? We send our warmest regrets.

About the ocean: We regret it. We regret Rehoboth, and beyond -- regretting the Hamptons, Nantucket, Provincetown. Hell, let's regret Fiji. We regret that Target has all those cute mix-and-match two-piece bathing suits, but no tops in our size anymore, already gone! And we regret that we never looked into beach houses. There were parties for this sort of thing -- where you and your friends were supposed to go and sign up for choice rentals. The party was in February. (So was abs boot camp.) We regret that the three August nights we thought we might like to book a $1,200 luxury cabin at that spa that overlooks the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur are already booked, thank you. (What we really regret? That we didn't have the money anyhow.)

We also regret lakes, and while we're at it, we regret swimmin' holes and cricks, and tubing on the Shenandoah when it's so shallow that you give up, stand up, and wade several yards with your inner tube back to the old school bus that takes you back to the rental shanty, where, regrettably, they listen to Jimmy Buffett all day. We regret missing that Friday night happy-hour MARC train to West Virginia, where people go to their weekend cabins, up there in what's-it-called, you know, the place where they always have such a swell time.

We regret that it's so nice out and we still stayed inside, under the guise that we had to. We regret Screen on the Green movie night, because we never go. We regret all the songs that are on the radio this summer, whatever they turn out to be, and we regret how much we listen to the '80s station.

We regret never having had our very own swimming pool. We regret a lot about pools, such as that feeling of wet concrete underfoot, and the smell of Coppertone, and the way the pages of a magazine get while you're reading at a pool. If we are ever in a pool this summer, we regret in advance that we will not glide like accomplished swimmers, and that we still splash around like an 8-year-old.

We regret not having a tan, and we regret the tans we had.

We regret that the marigolds look so droopy in August, and that we didn't plant what we should have already planted. We regret arriving late to the 8 p.m. showing of the big blockbuster movie at the Uptown, and having to watch it from the second row, straight up.

We regret farmers markets we never go to, even though they are two blocks away, every Saturday morning. We regret that our hair is not long enough and straight enough for a really cute ponytail, to wear with the summer dress we regret not buying on sale at the end of last summer. We regret barbecues we meant to have and did not. We regret that the bottle of Heinz ketchup in the refrigerator has a sell-by date of March 2006, which means it didn't come out at all last summer, and probably won't this summer.

We regret not signing up for vacation days sooner and discovering that there's now an embargo on any more people signing up for the third week of August or the fourth week of July.

Romantic weekend getaways?

Summer lovin'?

Uh, well-uh, well-uh, well-uh -- tell me less, tell me less . . .