In which Summer is over before it began

My mother rounds up.

“You better finish your homework. It’s already 9 o’clock!” she’s say and a glance at the clock would reveal that it was actually only 8:15. You can say that she was trying to trick us but I’ve seen it happen in too many situations to believe that is so. Oddly enough, she’s amazing at estimating the time down to the quarter hour if she’s going by the position of the sun but if she’s actually looking at a clock, she’s going to round to the next hour no matter how few minutes in we are.

This has been a running gag with my brother and I since we were little. As soon as it was 3:01, we’d joke that it Mom would call that 4 o’clock. Whenever she’d tell us a time, we’d both exchange a look and go see what time it really was just to see how much she rounded up this time. She does this far less now that we are adults then she did when we were kids but it’s still something my brother and I joke about.

Well, a new bar has been set in Mom’s Rounding that I just can’t let pass without taking note. This past Sunday, we were helping them get everything ready for the summer and my mother said that there was “no point” to putting the shade awning out because, and I quote, “Summer is already half over.”

Sunday was June 9th. The first day of Summer is June 21st.

So, according to my mother, Summer was half over on June 9th… 12 days before the first day of Summer.

I don’t even know what to do with that one.