This Is Not My Summer

Why this isn't a great summer for me? Let me count the ways...and tell it like an excerpt from a book.


I should have known that that summer wasn't going to be one of my favorites. After all, it started with a black eye! It was an omen. One I should have seen. The moment that the black eye healed, I became sick. It wasn't a I-need-to-be-hospitalized sickness, more of a no-way-I-can-go-out-tonight sickness, which, by the way, felt almost as bad.

Then, after that particular week, I was climbing out of the pool after a nice midnight rooftop swim in Dubai. I slipped, fell, put a hand out--which then slipped as well--and dislocated my shoulder. The pain was excruciating. I had to try to put clothes on with an arm I couldn't move, because apparently in the Emirates, it illegal to go into a hospital in a swimsuit (how do they treat people who have drowned?). The new, ugly, hot, itchy sling was bad enough, but because of the time I would need to heal, I couldn't play any sports soon. That shouldn't have been too big of a deal. Except that I had had high school soccer tryouts three weeks after the fact.

Did I think it could get worse? No. I figured that nothing worse could possibly happen, unless I and my entire family got hit by a bus.

Did I really think then that I was safe? That I could escape my bad luck by vacationing outside the Middle East, in Istanbul? Yes. I did.

But do you know what happened? Something infinitely worse than anything I expected. Something you don't realize has happened until it's too late.

I lost it.

Not my clothes. Those can be bought.

I lost the book.

I lost my book.