SUMMER WAS sometimes fun, but not always (Shutterstock).

Memorial Day, or Memorial Day weekend, is often thought of now as the “unofficial beginning of summer.”

Thinking of it that way seems to me as an inappropriate appropriation of what’s intended to be a somber reflection on the many hundreds of thousands of American men and women who died in the defense of their nation and our liberty.

Beyond that, I was never one of those who viewed the onset of summer as the arrival of a kind of paradise. Frankly, there’s a lot to dislike about summer.

Yes, there is some bah, humbug to be connected with June, July and August, and always has been.

Sure, I remember as a kid being delighted to finally put the schoolbooks away and have no homework, book reports or Friday math tests to worry about.

The rain were gone and these were the days of Kool-Aid and Oreos. But the thrill soon wore off and boredom set in. In an era when Dad worked and Mom stayed home, the kids rattled around the house, moaning, “There’s nothing to do.”

June Gloom gave way to July Fry, and back in the Baby Boom Era, rare was the house that had air conditioning, and the same for cars.

Eventually, the obligation to get a job – the “Summertime Blues” – set in and you swapped the hot house for the hot fast food eatery. You might finally have a little money and a little mobility, but you also had little free time.

Adulthood meant – initially – working 50 to 51 weeks a year and if your first apartment had A/C, it was more like a rumor than a fact; turning it up full blast lowered the temp from 101 to 100.5, if you were lucky.  Eventually, working full-time became a kind of grimly accepted way of life, like shaving or filing your income tax. You only had a brief interval of frolicking at the beach between the childhood “joys” and adult responsibilities, and – frankly – we almost all reach a point where you’d rather leave the bathing suit in the bottom drawer.

So, summer is almost here. Yippee.