Connections: August People

Perhaps someone among our readers knows where a bundle of damp beach things came from and will tell me. I found it on an upholstered stool near the living room door one afternoon in early August, and accused my 15-year-old grandson of knowing who left it there. He had arrived that day alone and left on foot and was as puzzled as I.

The bundle contained a thick, dark-blue towel about six feet long with a handsome insignia on it for Fighting Chance, the Sag Harbor organization that aids those struggling with cancer; a pale-orange T-shirt made of nylon and elastane with the brand name O’Neill emblazoned across the chest, and a red pair of GapKids extra-large boy’s bathing trunks. The shirt and trunks were obviously much too small for the 15-year-old and ridiculously too big for either of my 6-year-old grandsons.

I took them to the laundry room, where they have remained, and when I picked them up to take another look, a week later, they were still damp. August certainly was muggy, wasn’t it?

None of the neighbors is a young man, and no one seemed to have visitors who would fit into the trunks or shirt. Could this be one of those cases in which random roving summer visitors wander into the wrong house? You do hear about people coming home and finding strangers napping in the flower bed or porch swing.

Well, if anyone can claim these things, please give me a call. They looked almost new, and the swimming days of summer are nearly over.

Another August mystery, at least for me, is how the term “August people” became ubiquitous. I must lead a pretty sheltered life in the summer — hiding out, as so many of us do, to the point of almost becoming antisocial — because I hadn’t heard these words used pejoratively until a recent Star staff meeting. 

About a month ago, when a Bloomberg journalist phoned to ask for my opinion on what the nickname for this summer would turn out to be — something usually comes to the fore, like “the summer of the Surf Lodge” or “the summer before Sandy,” in reference to the hurricane — I suggested “the summer crowding got out of control,” which she said was too obvious to catch on. (She was right. It’s not exactly catchy. And heaven knows we’ve been saying the crowding has been “the worst” every summer for 15 or 20 years now . . . though this year, honestly, I think the cultural consensus is that it’s finally and indisputably true that we’ve reached maximum capacity. Anyway.)  

Later, I asked around and found that a number of friends and colleagues thought “August people”could be used for the whole season, to indicate it really had been the most dire: the summer of the August people.

Unpleasantries were described: a tenant who screamed at a landlord, claiming he was spying on her, when he arrived to pick up the garbage; a woman at a shop counter who angrily demanded her change be made more quickly; more and more drivers refusing to give way when obviously appropriate; neighborly pleasantries greeted with snarls and snubs; “namaste” being turned into a passive-aggressive come-back . . . and on and on.

“August people” as a concept was explained by the theory that visitors become tense and unpleasant, and occasionally aggressive, because they are desperately trying to squeeze the last few drops out of a waning summer (for which, in some cases, they have paid dearly). But this year, I was told, the August behavior had begun in July.

It was the summer of rudeness, they said.

Now, I’m not sure I buy it that the rudeness was turned up a notch, but I don’t really have anything better to suggest.

But while we’re on the subject: If you read my account here last week of the first Hamptons Institute panel at Guild Hall, at which the audience booed and hissed, you might be interested to hear that the second panel, on the Supreme Court, went smoothly, with nary a catcall. The audience was quiet and respectful of what the panelists had to say, and Alec Baldwin was engaged and engaging as moderator. It was August, yes, but everyone acted just like April.

I was sorry to miss the third panel, but from the live-streamed version on YouTube, it seemed the audience had reverted to form.