As a pre-adolescent girl obsessed with books and movies, I had a certain image of how my summers would go once I became a cool high school or college student. Effortlessly flowing and sun-kissed hair, an endless supply of sundresses and bikinis, and extraordinary boys were all mandatory. Summertime is most definitely a special time, but I never exactly experienced the summers that I imagined as a kid.
Let’s take a look back at all the different movie, book, and TV show-inspired scenarios that the hopeful, romantic twelve-year-old me saw on my horizon, but never quite came true:Â
1. Exploring Paris with the best friendIt seems like every season of Gossip Girl ended with someone saying “Screw this, let’s go to Paris.” A pretty good philosophy to live by, if you ask me. Spending a summer in Paris with my best friend seemed like a must. A la Blair and Serena, we would eat macarons, wear impossibly chic clothes, soak up museums and sights, and become regulars at Parisian cafes.
2. Waitressing at a diner in a beach townMy bookshelves were always full of a variety of books, including, I must admit, way too many cheesy teen books. Novels by Sarah Dessen were my favorite at twelve, and my brother often referred to them as my “endless dream days of summer beach land” books.  These books were invariably set during summer in some beach town full of girly friends and cute boys. Think: Sarah Dessen’s terrible-yet-wonderful Keeping The Moon, This Lullaby, or Along for the Ride. I expected summers to be a time of finding myself, most likely in a small beach town full of eccentric residents, as I lay on the beach by day and waitressed at a beach diner by night.
3. Life-changing summer campI never had any desire to go to summer camp as a kid. I was not the biggest fan of nature, and leaving my neighborhood friends for a summer had zero appeal. Regardless, I dreamed of going to that life-changing summer camp. I might pull a Dirty Dancing and meet my Patrick Swayze while I realized that I was so much cooler than I thought. Or I might go to Camp Walden like in the Parent Trap and meet my long-lost twin after a round of exciting cabin pranks. Regardless, I would spend a magical summer away from home and when I came back, no one would recognize me.
4. An Olsen twin summer vacationThough usually not even set during summer, Mary-Kate and Ashley travel classics always made me wish that my family could spend summer vacation in Sydney or Paris or the Bahamas. These teeny-bopper movies always had certain things in common: super cool twins (who didn’t want a twin, thanks to these kids), elaborate vacations with incredibly little adult supervision, and extended shopping montages set to classic early ’00s music. I began to think that these factors and outrageous adventures would all be reliable parts of my summer vacations.
5. A Santorini summer
How many times did I read the Sisterhood of the Traveling pants in sixth and seventh grade? Lena, Tibby, Bridgette, and Carmen were the coolest sixteen-year-old girls ever, and I dreamed of spending a summer in Greece like Lena did. Granted, I also wanted to be able to play soccer like Bridgette and be as badass as I thought Tibby was. No such luck in any of those areas.
After that stroll down memory lane, I’m sure many of you remember your childhood dream summers. They likely involved less work and thinking about your future than your actual summers have, and more adventures of travel, romance, and style. But who knows? Maybe this year, amidst working a low-pay job, snippets of your dream summer awaits. So, in the immortal words of our middle school yearbooks… “H.A.G.S.”!
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