Heat things up in the company of actors Hugh dancing, Dennis O'Hare and Reda.

Coming up right now, Selected Shorts falls in love with

Summertime. It's me, your host, Meg Walitzer. Stick around and I just might compare

thee to a Summer's Day. You're listening to selected shorts,

where our greatest actors transport us

through the magic of fiction,

one short story out of time. Wintertime is great for everyone who loves sweaters and soup. Spring and fall are perfect for those who like change in that they can watch the earth expand and contract respectively.

But summer, oh summer. From long long days to watermelon seeds, to reading at the beach, to the jingling

bell of the ice cream truck, it's a season that casts its own particular spell.

To me, summer always meant sleepaway camp.

When I was eight and my sister was 11, she and I went to a camp where we were so unhappy that

we joined a group called The Homesick Club. This involved sitting on a hill and crying as we talked

about the things we missed at home. Our dog Max, watching Gilligan's Island and bewitched,

our mom's spaghetti. Our mom. Years later I went to a camp that called itself a summer

arts workshop. I acted really badly there in experimental plays, including one called Hurry Up Please It's Time, based on the work of T.S. Elliot.

This predated Cats, by the way.

I played Hollow Man Number 3, and I and the other two Hollow Man, all of us 15-year-old girls who came shuffling out on stage tied together

with rubber straps, got to say the line, head pieces filled with straw, alas!

It was the best summer of my life, the best experience in my life so far, and I wrote

a novel inspired by that place called The Interesting's.

I feel like a lounge singer, and now I'm supposed to wait for applause and say, yeah, and it goes a little something like this.

When I think of summer, I think, yeah, yeah, headpiece filled with straw, but I also think of greengrass, an outdoor theater, deep friendship, and a kind of excited freedom

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